Missing Stories - The Messy Processes, Multifaceted Risks, Multiple Roles of Critical Ethnographers

Oct 15, 2026

Four critical ethnographers examine dilemmas encountered across individual research projects that sought to represent stories emerging from contexts where students and/or teachers are marginalized. Through a three-year diffractive analysis, they develop the notion of missing stories—stories entangled with messy processes, multifaceted risks, and multiple roles in the telling and hearing of people’s narratives. The article argues for justice-oriented critical qualitative research grounded in critical race and feminist theory.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages21

Reading Time53 min

AccessFree to download

Missing Stories: The Messy Processes, Multifaceted Risks, Multiple Roles of Critical Ethnographers

In Search of “Good Research”

Theoretical Frame

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| Missing Stories: The Messy Processes, Multifaceted Risks,& Multiple Roles of Critical Ethnographers | | --- | --- | Joy Howard, University of Southern Indiana Candace Thompson, University of North Carolina, Wilmington Kindel Nash, University of Missouri, Kansas City Sophia Rodriguez, College of Charleston Abstract In this article,four critical ethnographers reflect on dilemmas that arose during individual research projects. We grappled with the question: What does critical ethnography require from us as we work to represent stories that emerge in contexts where students and/or teachers have been marginalized? After engaging in a three-year process of diffractive analysis, we arrived at the notion of missing stories, as stories that involve messy processes, multifaceted risks and multiple roles in the telling and hearing ofpeople’s stories in research. Keywords: missing stories, diffractive reading, critical ethnography There are not many people in this world who value the stories of those who struggle with what to most seems simple. The honor of sharing those stories ties you to the one speaking. Like a book the heart can open and close, unlike a book the heart bleeds: be mindful of the hearts you open. –Haver Jim, Yakama Nation The opening epigraph by Haver Jim, a former student who worked with Joy in an equity-centered project, grounds our thinking about what happens when we hear, tell, and elicit personal stories from vulnerable populations. It requires that we take seriously questions about who/how we are as researchers and what counts as good scholarship. In this article, we respond to critical race and feminist scholars who have urged us to think with theory (Jackson and Mazzei 2012) and move toward representing and doing critical qualitative research that centers on justice for marginalized communities—not merely as a means for promoting our social capital within the academy (Pillow 2003; Villenas 2012) . As four early career scholars, we often reflected upon and discussed “stuck” places, dilemmas of belonging, and representation in our critical ethnographic work. Our ongoing dialogue and diffractive readings (Jackson and Mazzei 2012) yielded the concept of missing stories. We conceptualize missing stories as encompassing the processes, risks, and roles of the stories we hear and tell in our scholarly work toward justice. By attending to missing stories, we open ourselves to multiple truths within messy processes (Fine 2007), multifaceted risks in the hearing and telling of stories, and multiple roles in this work. In Search of“Good Research” When we consider how to move toward disrupting limiting and unjust norms in traditional scholarship, we take the stance that there is a crucial distinction between truth/the good in research. From an epistemological perspective, truth signifies individuality and singularity, traditional scholarship that accepts that one can arrive at a place of truth. This notion informs methodologies and processes, whereby the superiority of a researcher’s goals, decisions, and outcomes are mediated and measured by limited, and limiting, perspectives on stories (un)told. Conversely, we envision justice work as plural where researchers move toward the good by radically opening themselves to multiple truths and outcomes through collaborative processes (Guitierrez and Penuel 2014; Tuck and McKenszie 2014) . This pluralistic stance towards the good led us to unearth missing stories and deepen our collective understandings of justice. It is within the tension of that slash between truth/the good that missing stories are uncovered. In search of good research, we asked,“What does critical ethnography require from us as we work to represent stories that emerge in contexts where students and/or teachers have been marginalized?” In particular, we grappled with Pillow’s (2003) challenge to reflect on “Who can research whom, when, and how?”(176), and Villenas’ (2012) charg

FAQs

What question guides the authors’ critical ethnography work?

They ask what critical ethnography requires of researchers when representing stories that arise in contexts where students and/or teachers have been marginalized.

How do the authors define “missing stories”?

Missing stories describe the processes, risks, and roles involved in hearing and telling people’s narratives in scholarly work aimed at justice.

What is the theoretical foundation used to frame the studies?

The authors draw on critical race theory, critical whiteness studies, and feminist research, highlighting premises and how each informs their collective analysis.

Oct 15, 2026

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