Abstract |
In this doctoral thesis, a cross-temporal (2014-2018), cross-disciplinary, post-structural, post-colonial, border, multimethodological/multimodal approach was employed, to enlighten how LG(BT) Greek educators experience and perceive themselves, others, their contexts (broader and educational) and how they manage their sexuality and related actions within them. Based on empirical data, the thesis presents how these experiences, perceptions and actions, have shifted in a short time period (2014-2018), revealing the role that important transformations/transpositions played deriving from the broader social context, as a psychosocial unit. More specifically, research was spread across two time periods (2014 and 2018) and on two levels for each period: on the level of the individual, specifically LG(BT) educators, and on the broader socio-political level. A wide range of epistemological-methodological choices has thus been applied on this population (numerous qualitative/multimodal methods of data collection, emergent methods of analysis, innovative mixture of qualitative methodologies for researching on the level of individuals and context simultaneously), for testing and discovering potentialities and limitations during application. In more detail, for the purposes of this research, the methodology of Constructivist Grounded Theory was selected, including multimodal qualitative data, focusing mostly on ten LG(BT) educators interviewed during 2018 and four LG(BT) educators interviewed during 2014. The multiple qualitative methods used on these samples were: in depth, semi-structured interview, photovoice, biographical-narrative interview, drawings and metaphorical tasks. Methods of analysis were following the needs of the field, usually as emergent methods, in the means that is proposed by Kathy Charmaz. Those methods enlightened the issues related to this population in their own terms for each time period. Another method of analysis used was also ‘pooled case comparison’ by West and Oldfather, in a population-sensitized manner, enabling the mixture and expansion of different samples, while empowering issues of validity and reliability. Supplementary, Situational Analysis proposed by Adele E. Clarke and associates was also used for systematic contextualization and for cartographical and situated understanding of individual experiences and perceptions within broader socio-political situations, around 2014 and 2018. The latter was implemented through the wide and thorough collection of multimodal qualitative data from the broader context and also by collecting data from focus groups with heterosexual educators regarding each time period. Situational Analysis led to the construction of social worlds/arenas maps and situational maps. Ultimately, experiences, perceptions, co-existence, and transformations/transpositions of LG(BT) educators were found to be linked with dynamic contradictions and conflicts in the broader context, in the interplay of transnational and local powers and in the infusion of new knowledges, surfacing on the level of individuals, in (inter)individual procedures of bordering and debordering, in contradicting experiences and perceptions and thus, in hybridities, in-betweenness and liminalities. These procedures were found to situate the participants in a (psychosocial amongst others) state of in-betweeness during 2018, having departed from a previous state of a type of margin, which was still evident during 2014. The broader context and the educational context, surface thus, as uncertain borderlands of multiple symbolic, shifting borders where individuals walk between thin lines of safety-precariousness, visibility-invisibility, power-powerlessness, compliance-resistance, present-past, collectivization-differentiation. Throughout these contradictions, hybridities and in-betweenness, these LG(BT) subjectivities can be seen as border dwellers, or even on a liminal state (meaning on a rite of passage) towards something new, which is not yet entirely traceable, representable or known, with complex psychosocial/psychoeducational implications. The plurality of qualitative/multimodal methodological choices made (methods of collecting data, methods of analysis, mixing methodologies/methods), enabled complex psychosocial and shifting phenomena to arise in a holistic way. In these terms, the school context and LG(BT) populations dwelling there, can be approached multidimensionally, as part of broader dynamic situations and not abstracted from them. The current doctoral thesis is an example of applying creative-multimodal methodologies/methods, in an effort to observe, locate cartographically and situate dynamic changes on the level of both the individuals and their context, posing the complex, shifting psychosocial/psychopedagogical procedures of vulnerable and marginalized groups on a different, interesting, alternative basis.
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