What's in the 'co'? Tending the tensions in co-creative inquiry in social work education

Abstract

Higher education is one of many fields of practice that have undergone a so-called ‘dialogic turn’ whereby processes of co-creation proliferate as a means of generating knowledge. According to dialogic ideals, co-creation harnesses the transformative potential of dialogue across difference and empowers participants as co-learners or co-researchers. But what does the ‘co’ of ‘co-creation’ entail in practice? The aim of the article is to explore the tensions in the ‘co’ of co-creation through critical, reflexive analysis of the enactment of one particular approach to co-creation, ‘Academic Co-Creative Inquiry’ (ACCI), in a social work course in a higher educational institution in Aotearoa New Zealand. Using the Integrated Framework for Analysing Dialogic Knowledge Production and Communication (IFADIA), the analysis identifies tensions arising in the interplay between top-down and bottom-up dynamics in a contested terrain of dialogic and neoliberal discourses. It is argued that ACCI’s and IFADIA’s reflexive sensitivity in relation to tensions offers some resistance to neoliberalism in higher education.

Keywords:

• Academic co-creative inquiry
• dialogue
• Integrated Framework for Analysing Dialogic Knowledge Production and Communication
• neoliberal discourse
• tensions

Acknowledgements

Louise Phillips would like to thank the Department of Social Practice, UNITEC Institute of Technology, Auckland for hosting her research visit in Spring 2013.

Funding

This work was supported by the Danish Council for Independent Research/Social Sciences [grant number 2419147].

Notes

1. This is a simplified way of addressing the complexities of bi-culturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand. To gain a more nuanced picture of bi-culturalism in Autoearoa New Zealandas a unique way of partnership between indigenous people and colonisers through a written document, the Treaty of Waitangi, see Adams (1977), Durie (1998), Moon (2002), Orange (1989, 1990), Scott (1975), Walker (2004), Simpson (1990), and Buick (1916).