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This chapter explores researcher reflexivity developed during an institutional ethnography (IE; Smith, 2005) of a primary school. It illustrates the use of a narrative method, “The Listening Guide” (Mauthner & Doucet, 2008), in particular my production of an “I” poem after being interviewed by research participants. This promotes an ethical approach to researcher reflexivity, enabling an explicit analysis of the researcher’s subjectivities in the use of ethnographic methods and a deeper understanding of privilege and power on the part of the researcher. The approach works to negate any researcher authority over the textual representations of the research participants and objectification of them. Consideration is given to the tensions between the sociological basis of IE and how this is troubled by particular approaches to narrative production. The point of reflection in institutional ethnography is not to learn about the researcher per se, but to learn about the researcher’s location in the “relations of ruling” (Smith, 2005), that is, the researcher’s standpoint. There are particular tensions for institutional ethnographers in seeking to avoid objectification of participants through both “institutional capture” and “privileged irresponsibility,” specifically; the imposition of researcher subjectivities in listening for, asking about, and producing texts. A significant concern, for example, in this research context is the researcher’s place and privilege in the education hierarchy. I argue that it is precisely because of the troubling nature of the Listening Guide and “I” poems that they can be utilized by institutional ethnographers in revealing and analyzing the co-ordination of social relations.

In this chapter, I highlight the need to turn the institutional ethnography (IE) lens of enquiry onto IE itself, and consequently, the importance for institutional ethnographers to attend to their standpoint in taking up and activating their understanding of IE. Many, including Wise and Stanley (1990) and Walby (2007), celebrate Smith’s sociology but raise important ontological and epistemological questions about IE’s own recursive power. While IE has developed from a critique of wider sociological inquiry, it is troubled by the institutional ethnographer’s own standpont when using IE uncritically, without reflexivity of their standpoint in relation with IE and knowledge generation. IE stands in relation between the researcher and the everyday of the research participants in a local research context that is particular and plural, situated and dynamic. The chapter highlights a particular critique by Dorothy Smith of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus as a “blobontology,” yet considers the theoretical similarities between Smith and Bourdieu. I argue that institutional ethnographers and IE itself are not be immune from the kinds of unravelling that Smith undertakes of other approaches to sociological inquiry. Researcher standpoint, reflexivity, and their relation to knowledge generation are therefore critical aspects of approach without which there is potential to “other” and develop morally questionable representations of people that diminishes the actuality of their subjective experience.

All gender identity is socialized, but anything gendered feminine is marginalized. In the United States, we live in a patriarchal culture that is bounded by binary gender identity. Up to this point, work on gender and education leadership has remained within the bounds of patriarchy, and thus been confined to binary, hierarchical gender definitions. This study pushes past prior work to advance a more complex and messy understanding of how identity impacts aspiring leaders in their careers. Using Carol Gilligan and Snider (2018) Listening Guide Method, this study of 18 aspiring school leaders of different gender identities, sexual identities, and races focuses on how gender identity and gender performance impact school leaders' career trajectories. A key finding of this study is that women, regardless of race or sexual identity, have difficulty finding mentors while men, regardless of race or sexual identity, are tapped by schools leaders and offered mentoring opportunities. This chapter posits a new framework for mentoring that will lead to more liberatory pipeline structures.