The Responsible Methodologist ─ Inquiry, Truth-Telling, and Social Justice

What does it mean to be a responsible methodologist? Certainly it is more than being a research middle-manager who ensures that the tools used in a thesis or dissertation are of the right gauge. In The Responsible Methodologist, leading education scholar Aaron Kuntz uses the latest movements in social theory to challenge qualitative researchers to reconceptualize their work away from the technocratic toward an intervention, an ethical disruption of the norm, an activist stance toward progressive social change. Inviting creativity and vision, he insists that the responsible methodologist become a force leading the discourse toward social justice. His book
-challenges the technocratic role given to qualitative methodologists in university settings;
-urges them to become a force for change through Foucault’s parrhesia, risky truth-telling;
-includes research projects that have incorporated this vision.

Aaron M. Kuntz is Department Head, Educational Studies in Psychology, Research Methodology, and Counseling, and Associate Professor of Educational Studies at the University of Alabama. He serves as Program Coordinator for the PhD in Educational Research and teaches graduate courses in qualitative inquiry and foundations of education. His research interests include critical qualitative inquiry, academic activism and citizenship, critical geography, and philosophy of education. Kuntz’s publications appear in such diverse journals as Qualitative Inquiry, Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies, Journal of Language and Politics, The Journal of Higher Education, The Review of Higher Education, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Higher Education Policy, and others. He co-authored Qualitative Inquiry for Equity in Higher Education: Methodological Implications, Negotiations, and Responsibilities (Jossey-Bass) and co-edited with John Petrovic the volume Citizenship Education: Global Perspectives, Local Practices (Routledge). He received his doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.