Jennifer Buehler uses ethnographic research methods to explore issues of race, literacy, and equity in urban schools. Her early work as an ethnographer focused on how staff members produced "toxic" school culture at an underperforming, racially divided urban high school. Her more recent ethnographic work has examined the experiences of dropout and disconnected youth who chose to return to school after an interruption in their education.

Buehler's ethnographic research has been supported by a Presidential Research Fund Award, a Faculty Research Leave, a Beaumont Faculty Development Grant, and a Charter School Sponsorship Faculty Grant, all at Saint Louis University.

As a former high school English teacher, Buehler also studies young adult literature. She has written about the history of the field, current developments regarding racial diversity in publishing, and approaches to teaching that bring out the complexity of YA literary texts. During her years hosting a YA lit podcast for the National Council of Teachers of English, she interviewed many of the field's most distinguished authors including Laurie Halse Anderson, Judy Blume, and Walter Dean Myers.