Dr Suzanne O’Keeffe | Silence Does the Work: Exploring the Hidden Force that Shapes Institutions

In her recent paper, O’Keeffe makes a compelling case for treating silence as a rich and active source of meaning in qualitative research. She’s particularly interested in structural silence, which lives in institutions, curricula, and cultural norms. It’s what nobody officially discusses, what gets left out of policy, what everyone tacitly understands but no one is permitted to name. Her central question is not what silence is, but what silence is doing.

O’Keeffe draws on two of her own research studies, both set in Irish primary schools. One explored the professional lives of male primary teachers; the other examined how teachers approach Relationships and Sexuality Education. In both, this kind of structural silence was everywhere, and it was doing a great deal of work.

She identifies two particularly revealing forms of silence. The first is acquiescent silence: the silence of resignation. Teachers in the Relationships and Sexuality Education study spoke about how the curriculum largely focused on reproduction, and how sexuality, consent and pleasure were almost entirely absent. Although the teachers were well aware that the curriculum wasn’t meeting their pupils’ needs, challenging this felt pointless, even risky. As one teacher put it: “Our hands are completely tied.” A system so effective at distributing power had made dissent feel futile before it could even begin.

The second form is defensive silence: the silence of fear. Male teachers in O’Keeffe’s other study described quietly monitoring their own behaviour, ensuring they remained visible to colleagues and the public by leaving classroom doors open and window blinds raised. No school policy required this of them. Rather, they were responding to an unspoken sense that they were always being watched – not only by the school, but by society itself.

What makes O’Keeffe’s framework so valuable is its insistence that these silences are not neutral. They legitimise certain knowledge and shut down other possibilities. They protect the status quo while making that protection invisible.

For qualitative researchers, the implications are significant. Recognising silence as a structural force opens up a more honest and politically attuned way of understanding the worlds that participants describe.