The origin of this book can be traced back to my research experience when I started to pursue my PhD degree in 2005 at the University of Victoria, Canada. My doctoral dissertation was an ethnographic study investigating the natural ways of communication and interaction between science professionals and young people during a science internship. My doctoral study was part of the Pacific CRYSTAL (Centres for Research in Youth, Science Teaching, and Learning) Project, sponsored by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. As an international student from Taiwan, I was excited to learn that a well-known scientist at the University of Victoria had graciously agreed to open his laboratory as a site for youth internships. I understood this was a unique opportunity for youth since not many scientists are willing to open their laboratories to youth for visits, let alone allowing youth to use the expensive high-tech equipment. Thus, I was surprised and in awe when I heard about this scientistâs extraordinary openness to having young people working in his laboratory.
As a science educator, I wondered if I could suggest to implement some research-based pedagogies be implemented in the internship, such as science inquiry, project-based learning, or constructivist approaches that might enhance the quality of the internship. However, when I presented the possibility of including these pedagogical practices in the internship and explained my rationale, the scientist respectfully declined my suggestions and explained the limitations and challenges of time and resources to implement these practices in a scientific laboratory. I understood his position as a scientist who needed to maintain the productivity of scientific research; he needed to avoid the possible chaos these educational interventions might bring; and to minimize the possible disturbances that high school interns might generate among the laboratory members. Thus, I gave up the idea to âartificially designâ an internship. Instead of implementing some educational interventions in my doctoral study, I conducted an ethnographic study to understand the ânatural waysâ of teaching and learning that happened in the science internship. Although the internship was mainly provided and designed by the intuition of science professionals (e.g., scientists, technicians, graduate students) who had not received educational training, these youth still expressed that they learned a great deal in their internship and appreciated the opportunity to work inside a university laboratory with real scientists.
However, during my participation in this internship, I witnessed the talents and passions of these youth and realized how much better the internship could be for them if we could incorporate some pedagogical innovations. One innovation I was interested in implementing was âcogenerative dialogues,â a pedagogical tool created by Dr. Wolff-Michael Roth, Lansdowne Professor at the University of Victoria, and Dr. Kenneth Tobin, Presidential Professor at the City University of New York. Cogenerative dialogues are equitable and respectful conversations among a group of stakeholders to reflect on the groupâs collective practice, with the goal of achieving consensus on action plans to improve collective practice, such as teaching and learning in classrooms. Cogenerative dialogues typically create a safe environment to empower stakeholders to express their different points of view, especially allowing students to voice their ideas. At that time, one of my colleagues, Dr. Ian Stith, incorporated cogenerative dialogues into his doctoral research in elementary education and discovered that the dialogues greatly enhanced the studentsâ learning. I was pleased that my colleague had the opportunity to implement an innovative intervention in his doctoral study, but I also understood the complexity and challenges in terms of resources and politics involved in the community of scientists. Therefore, a seed was planted in my mind to design an innovative science internship, which finally flourished when I became a faculty member at the University of Texas at El Paso, USA, and received a federal grant from the National Science Foundation in 2013.
This five-year project, titled âTransforming Studentsâ Partnerships with Scientists Through Cogenerative Dialoguesâ (US$1,499,756, National Science Foundation, No. DRL-1322600, 10/01/2013â09/30/2018), was the first project to incorporate the pedagogical tool of cogenerative dialogues into student-scientist partnerships. This project at the University of Texas at El Paso is also known as the âWork With A Scientistâ Program. Cogenerative dialogues, because of their inclusive and democratic nature, appear to be a potentially effective means to improve student-scientist partnerships and advance the status quo of student-scientist partnerships to a new level. As the principal investigator, I often shared with others that this project was my babyâfertilized in 2005 and now finally delivered to the world.
This bookâs purpose is to introduce this pioneering project about youthsâ cogenerative dialogues with scientists. It includes eleven chapters. In Chapters 1â4, I describe how we prepared and set up the program, how we recruited scientists and young people, what principles and protocols we considered in designing a science internship for youth, and how we trained participants to conduct cogenerative dialogues. In Chapters 5â6, I report on the topics, including issues and solutions, that were discussed in cogenerative dialogues between young people and scientists in the program, including major challenges we encountered and solutions we came up with to improve the implementations of cogenerative dialogues. In Chapters 7â10, I discuss the effects and impacts of cogenerative dialogues on both youth and scientists, including their ways of crossing different cultures, perceptions of the learning environment, emotion transformation, and overall experiences of cogenerative dialogues. In Chapter 11, based on the program results, I discuss the implications and possible future research on student-scientist partnerships.
As a result, we observed many positive effects of incorporating cogenerative dialogues into youthsâ science internships in the âWork With A Scientistâ Program. It is my hope that this pioneering project provides sufficient examples, evidence, rationale, and justification to inspire more educators, especially scientists, to be open for integrating the innovative pedagogical tool of cogenerative dialogues into their work with young people!