Care-Based Methodologies: Reimagining Qualitative Research with Youth in US Schools

Care-Based Methodologies reimagines relationships between researchers and youth participants in school-based research. The book calls attention to care-based methodologies as essential to qualitative and ethnographic research in schools, particularly when participants are youth from nondominant communities. While researchers come to schools seeking to understand youths’ lived experiences and become implicated in the quotidian rhythms of their lives, it is rare that they receive training on how to navigate the complex interpersonal dynamics and relationships that take shape during long-term school research.

How can researchers ensure that they care for the wellbeing of youth, not just the stories and data collected from them? How do researchers maneuver the various roles they may come to play in youth’s lives over the course of, and beyond, a study with care? What happens when scholars transgress the traditional power dynamics of researcher-participant relationships to walk with youth in their research?

This book illustrates the possibilities for conducting rigorous and responsible research that simultaneously improves our understanding of youth’s lives, cares for their wellbeing, and works toward dismantling the systems that oppress them. The editors of the volume offer an opening chapter that articulates how researchers can practice care-based methodologies with youth by centering transparency, reflexivity, reciprocity, curiosity, consent, and self-care. The chapters that follow draw from a range of qualitative and ethnographic studies to highlight how care mediates and informs the research process and offer concrete guidance for employing care-based methodologies in school-based studies with youth.