Methodological Literacies: Graduate Students Navigating Qualitative Methodology's Multiplicity

In this inquiry, I conceptualize, explore, and demonstrate, what I call (qualitative) methodological literacies—the practices and products of methodological meaning-making with/in and about the research process. The manuscript addresses the question, “What is your methodology?” by quickly unfolding to the more foundational one: “What is methodology?”’ Working with definitions from across the field of qualitative inquiry, I demonstrate that this question—of methodology’s definition, or its ontology—is far from settled. Methodology is not just numerous (e.g., in iterations) but also multiplicitous, and this multiplicity has consequences for how we teach, learn, discuss, design, and evaluate methodology. However, by drawing from multiliteracies, metaphor, paradox and parallax, I argue that while methodology’s multiplicity can cause problems, it is not itself a problem. Accordingly, I seek not to resolve methodological difference but to make sense of how we can (better) navigate it on purpose.