Transforming authoritative discourse: mediating cogenerative dialogues between scientists and high school students

ABSTRACT

Working with scientists can be an effective way of engaging high school students in science inquiry. The communication gap between scientists and students, however, can be a barrier to teaching and learning. This qualitative study introduced cogenerative dialogues (cogens), which, due to their emancipatory and democratic nature, appear to be a useful tool to improve communication between scientists and students. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of addressivity in dialogism, this study investigated the effective strategies used by an exemplary mediator. Ten effective strategies are identified and illustrated with examples. The findings of this study are a useful reference for educators to train dialogue mediators to enhance learning in different educational settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Cogenerative dialogues
• dialogism
• scientists
• internship
• mediating strategies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under [grant number DRL 1322600]. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.