Aaron M Kuntz
Dr. Aaron M. Kuntz is Professor of Research Methodology at Florida International University, where he currently holds the Frost Professorship of Education and Human Development. Dr. Kuntz’s research focuses on developing “materialist methodologies” – ways of producing knowledge that take seriously the theoretical deliberations of critical theory, relational materialism, and poststructuralism that have emerged in social theory over the past fifty years. He grounds this work in empirical questions about the production of inquiry in the K-16 arena, faculty work and activism in postsecondary institutions, and the impact of the built environment on learning.
Dr. Kuntz’s publications appear in a diverse array of research and methodological journals. His co-authored book projects include Qualitative Inquiry for Equity in Higher Education: Methodological Implications, Negotiations, and Responsibilities (Jossey-Bass Press), Leading Dynamic Schools: Implementing Ethical Education Policy (Corwin Press), and Citizenship Education: Global Perspectives, Local Practices (Routledge Press).
In 2015, Dr. Kuntz published his first solo-authored book, The Responsible Methodologist: Inquiry, Truth-Telling, and Social Justice (Routledge Press) which was selected as Honorable Mention for the 2017 AERA Qual SIG book award.
Dr. Kuntz’s latest book, Qualitative Inquiry, Cartography, & the Promise of Material Change (Routledge Press) was awarded the 2020 Outstanding Book Award from the Qualitative SIG at AERA.
Dr. Kuntz’s publications appear in a diverse array of research and methodological journals. His co-authored book projects include Qualitative Inquiry for Equity in Higher Education: Methodological Implications, Negotiations, and Responsibilities (Jossey-Bass Press), Leading Dynamic Schools: Implementing Ethical Education Policy (Corwin Press), and Citizenship Education: Global Perspectives, Local Practices (Routledge Press).
In 2015, Dr. Kuntz published his first solo-authored book, The Responsible Methodologist: Inquiry, Truth-Telling, and Social Justice (Routledge Press) which was selected as Honorable Mention for the 2017 AERA Qual SIG book award.
Dr. Kuntz’s latest book, Qualitative Inquiry, Cartography, & the Promise of Material Change (Routledge Press) was awarded the 2020 Outstanding Book Award from the Qualitative SIG at AERA.
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Papers by Aaron M Kuntz
The author engages his own inquiry as radical cartographic work, drawing forth distinctions between dialectical and dialogic formations of materialism in order to develop what he terms relational materialism—an engaged orientation to living that dwells in the entangled relations of affirmative ethics and enduring practices of resistance and refusal. Drawing upon examples from higher education, contemporary culture, and normative assumptions of governance, the author considers the potential that we might generate living alternatives to the contemporary status quo; daily practices no longer dependent on binary division or standardized calculations of what "matters." As such, the author advocates for practices of virtuous inquiry (future-orientated ethical assertions of what one should do) that orient inquiry as materially ethical activity.
Despite the often-overwhelming state of inequity and exploitation in our contemporary world, Kuntz generates an affirmative ethical stance that we can become relationally different, guided by a virtuous determination to articulate inquiry as the cartographic work of disruption and imagination. This text will prove valuable to graduate students and faculty who take inquiry seriously and seek the means to understand their work as engaged in the necessary challenge for material change.
- Patti Lather, Ohio State University, emerita
"Finally we have something to cite when discussing methodologists’ responsibilities and qualitative inquiry as a political act! This book offers well-structured arguments and lovely theoretical insights related to the ways in which methodologists who take their work seriously move beyond the question of procedure when approaching methodological knowing and scholarship. I highly recommend this book for all interested in expanding their perspectives on methodological responsibilities of scholars who teach and study methods. "
- Mirka Koro-Ljungberg, Arizona State University
"Aaron Kuntz has written a stunning critique of technocratic social science methodology that ignores both its historical and political entanglements as well as its theoretical commitments. He reminds us that methodology is thinkable (or not) only within specific onto-epistemological formations and cannot be applied willy-nilly from one study to another as has become all too common in educational research. "
- Elizabeth A. St. Pierre, University of Georgia
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.
"Citizenship Education around the World offers valuable insight into the educational history and present conditions of individual countries and counters the idea that true citizenship education is best understood in narrow economic terms. This is an important addition to the critical literature on comparative education policy as well as to the growing body of critical work on the aims and impact of neo-liberalism." --Walter Feinberg, the University of Illinois, USA