Students in Action: Cogeneratives Dialogues from Secondary to Elementary Schools

This book chronicles our work on cogenerative dialoguing in high schools and an elementary school. Cogenerative dialoguing brings together students, teachers, and other relevant stakeholders in the educational enterprise to make sense of some common teaching—learning experiences and issues arising thereof in order to design changes in their environment for the purpose of improving the teaching—learning situation. Our work addresses the overarching question: What will happen when cogenerative dialogue praxis is introduced to an elementary school class? More specifically we explore; the use of cogenerative dialogues as research praxis in terms of some of the ethical issues inherent in classroom research; how cogenerative dialogue praxis can serve as one viable solution for teachers to ethically mediate the various activity systems that constitute a class; the internal contradictions inherent in cogenerative dialogues; the “unfocused” moments during cogenerative dialogues; the long term learning that takes place during the cogenerative dialogues; and finally we explore what we learned from the elementary teacher we worked with. The intended audiences for this book are professionals or acedemics that have used, or are curious about, cogenerative dialogues. Specifically, the unique application of cogenerative dialogues in an elementary school speaks to teachers at that level interested in increasing student participation.