Abstract
The study explores teachers’ perception of the level of involvement of academic researchers in participatory action research and outlines some possible strategies to enhance communication during the process of co-creation. Data were collected within a pilot action that involved 159 pupils and 16 teachers in a preschool and a primary school in Italy. Throughout the research process, researchers tended to limit their direct interventions in the planning and implementation of the activities in order to avoid surreptitiously shaping the activities from their epistemically authoritative position. This choice was effective in promoting teachers’ and children’s ideas and resulted in a set of activities that positively impacted everyday school life. However, the analysis of the post-hoc interviews illustrates that several teachers evaluated this posture negatively. It is argued that these negative evaluations point to a dilemma that researchers inevitably face when adopting a methodological framework based on co-creation. On the basis of this critical appraisal of teachers’ perceptions, the article outlines some implications for researchers’ professional practice and some possible strategies to improve communication in the field.
Keywords
Introduction
A central issue in participatory action research (PAR) is the negotiation of researchers’ and participants’ respective roles and responsibilities during the research process. 1 In comparison to other kinds of research, the prominence accorded to participants’ perspectives might result in a certain ambiguity regarding who is responsible for what in the field. In schools, this constitutive ambiguity amounts to a continuous negotiation of the relationship between researchers, students, and teachers. Since several scholars have implemented PAR in educational institutions (e.g., Hemy & Meshulam, 2021), there is meanwhile a consistent bulk of research on the ‘terms’ of these relationships. Notably, the majority of studies have focused on the role of students, advancing various strategies to empower them by placing their ideas and needs at the center of the research endeavor. As regards teachers, there is not as much literature on their relationship with researchers during participatory research. However, the issue is extremely relevant: in a context characterized by widespread social pressure on the teaching profession (Stapleton, 2021), by pre-existing and lingering power asymmetries (Stewart, 2006), and by potential difficulties in communication (Zimmerman Nilsson et al., 2018), it is often complicated to establish an effective interprofessional relationship with teachers. For instance, a central issue regards the negotiation of the level of involvement of researchers, that is, of the main responsibility for the conduction of the research process. If researchers usually aim to reach ‘equality’ by adopting a rather peripheral role in decision-making, teachers might be oriented to the researcher as the person who is mainly in charge of planning and guiding the activities. This potential clash in the expectations of teachers and researchers is relatively uncharted territory and worthy of further exploration.
This article is based on participatory action research that was developed in an Italian pre-school and primary school within a broader European project (NEW ABC; see the section on data and methodology). The research process involved children, children’s relatives, and teachers in the planning and implementation of activities that fostered the social inclusion of children and young people at school. Consistently with the participatory methodology adopted, during the research process we tended to limit our involvement in order to let teachers and children shape the activities according to their ideas and needs. Overall, this choice was effective in promoting participants’ ideas and resulted in a set of activities that positively impacted everyday school life. However, this kind of approach to the collaborative co-construction of the activities was quite challenging for some participants: during the final semi-structured interviews, several teachers reported experiencing a lack of clarity and guidance that led to a feeling of abandonment. This study sets out from the analysis of these negative assessments and delineates some possible strategies to enhance communication between teachers and researchers. Specifically, the study argues that field incomprehension and miscommunication were central factors in teachers’ reported difficulties, and points thus to the relevance of researchers’ interactional competence, meant as the ability to notice and respond fluently to the contingencies of their social interactions with participants in the field. It is argued that an increased interactional competence would allow researchers to better manage their social relationship with participants and effectively navigate the dilemmas inherent to participatory research.
The aims of the study are twofold. First, the article aims to describe teachers’ perception of the level of involvement of academic researchers during participatory research, analyzing their assessments in relation to the dilemmas they seem to point at. Second, it aims to provide some possible starting points for a better negotiation of teachers’ and researchers’ respective roles and responsibilities in future research.
Participatory action research in schools
Even though the label of participatory action research includes different perspectives and methods, this kind of research usually unfolds within a concrete context and aims to critically transform some of its features by involving all participants in the collaborative co-construction of relevant knowledge (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005; see ; Kindon et al., 2007). In this regard, PAR emerged in relation to a critique of the process of scientific knowledge production: contesting a view of scientific knowledge as the product of (few) professional researchers, this approach brought participants’ expertise to the fore, underscoring its relevance in the construction of scientific knowledge that is close to their life-world and real needs (Lawson et al., 2015).
In schools, researchers share the responsibility to plan and implement research with teachers and students, who can potentially develop instruments to deal with and challenge their social reality (see, among others, Call-Cummings, 2018; Cammarota & Romero, 2011; Ravitch & Wirth, 2007; Anderson, 2017). In this collaborative endeavor, one of the main challenges is to involve participants with different institutional statuses (e.g., teacher vs. student) in a possibly non-hierarchical process (Gill et al., 2012): all participants should take a more or less equal part in the research process (e.g., in the choice of the phenomena that are relevant and worthy of study, or in the negotiation of the expertise on a specific matter; Gaventa & Cornwall, 2008). Clearly, these ‘equal’ opportunities are inscribed (a) in a network of asymmetrical social relationships, (b) in a school culture that might heavily bear on the activities that unfold in the school context (Koutselini, 2008), and (c) in a frame of reciprocal expectations which might result in local misunderstandings regarding the rights and obligations to be in charge of the activity. Acknowledging these potential challenges, several authors have focused on the characteristics of field relationships during participatory research.
On the relationship between researchers and teachers
Within participatory action research, most researchers focused on their relationship with children and young people and on possible strategies to actively involve them in the research process (e.g., Call-Cummings, 2017; Cook-Sather, 2012). Next to this primary focus, other studies have considered the researcher’s relationship with the other professionals in the field, namely teachers. This stream of research has focused on various aspects of their interprofessional relationship. For example, scholars have underlined the relevance of confidence and mutual reliance for the building and maintenance of effective communication throughout the research process (Frankman & Howes, 2006), stressing the necessary level of trust between teachers and researchers (Wennergren & Rönnerman, 2006). Notably, communication with teachers might prove especially challenging in a context of raising social pressure and delegitimization of the teaching profession: in several countries of the Global North, teachers are under steady scrutiny and critique while also being poorly economically rewarded (e.g., Stapleton, 2021). During their field interactions with researchers, teachers might interpret any remark on their practice in relation to this broader narrative that belittles and questions the teaching profession. In turn, these possible communicative breakdowns and misunderstandings might undermine trust between teachers and researchers, thus jeopardizing their relationship (Zimmerman Nilsson et al., 2018).
Another central issue in the relationship between teachers and researchers is bound to their perceived status asymmetries. Several authors underlined how the role of researcher usually implies a higher status in comparison to that of the teacher (e.g., Stewart, 2006). Specifically, a crucial aspect of these asymmetries regards the epistemic domain, that is, which participant is (perceived as) more knowledgeable in relation to a specific topic (see Caronia, 2018). In the field, researchers are usually perceived as epistemically-authoritative qua members of an academic institution, being thus possibly perceived as a threat to teachers’ established practices and domain of expertise. Despite the emphasis on equality in participatory approaches, it would be naïve to assume that these status asymmetries can be simply dismissed or ignored (Gallagher, 2008). In fact, teachers and researchers are steadily engaged in the local negotiation of their respective knowledge and competences. For instance, in the field participants might negotiate who knows what in relation to the matter at hand, re-arranging their epistemic rights and responsibilities through their social interactions (see Heritage, 2012 on epistemics in interaction). This negotiation around epistemic rights is crucial, since it is one of the bases on which decisions regarding appropriate courses of action are taken (Clifton et al., 2018; Stevanovic & Peräkylä, 2012): when teachers and researchers need to choose how to construct a certain activity, they often orient to their respective knowledge domains. Thus, the dialogic negotiation of these local asymmetries affects established and ongoing decisions during participatory action research.
These instances of decision-making are central to the unfolding of any participatory research and constitutive of the relationship between teachers and researchers. Who decides, in the end? How can researchers delegate the power to decide without totally relinquishing their role in the co-creation process? A few scholars have already underlined the relevance of this dilemma (Reimer & Bruce, 1994; Black-Hawkins & Amrhein, 2014), stressing the need to find a balance between researcher-led aspects of the process and participants’ involvement. However, there is a relative paucity of research on teachers’ perspective on the matter (but see Judah & Richardson, 2006 on three teachers’ recounting of their participation in action research). Within participatory research, teachers’ evaluations of the level of involvement of academic researchers are relatively uncharted territory. Moreover, if the challenges of this relationship are known, less is known about possible ways to effectively address them. In this regard, the present study fills a research gap by illustrating teachers’ perceptions of the PAR process and by suggesting some possible strategies to facilitate a shared and smooth process of co-creation.
Data and methodology
Data were collected within the project Networking the Educational World: Across Boundaries for Community Building (hereafter, NEW ABC), which was developed within the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program funded by the European Union. The project involves thirteen partners in nine European countries and is aimed at enhancing children’s and young people’s social inclusion in formal, informal, and non-formal educational contexts (see newabc.eu). All pilot actions of the project are conducted within the framework of Participatory Action Research, aiming thus to actively involve public schools, teaching and intercultural centers, and community-based associations in the co-creation of locally relevant activities. In public schools, the project aims to involve students, teachers, headmasters, families and policy makers in the joint creation and implementation of good practices that tackle the everyday challenges of the context. The expected outcomes of these partnerships are (a) the co-creation of good and effective practices that tackle specific local challenges and empower participants by providing them with keys to address their social reality, and (b) the development of horizontal and vertical synergies between stakeholders (e.g., between different schools).
This article focuses on a pilot action that was implemented in a pre-school and a primary school in Italy. Within this pilot action, researchers and teachers collaborated on various activities that revolved around the ‘ideal school’. The activities were planned to let teachers and children think of a ‘perfect’ school and propose and implement changes that could improve their actual school experience. The pilot action involved 7 different classrooms, comprising 159 pupils and 16 teachers. The research team included the author and another academic researcher. Each classroom developed a specific activity through a process of co-creation that involved researchers, teachers, children, and children’s relatives. The purpose of this collaborative co-construction was the development of activities that were close to participants’ ideas and needs and could provide them with means to effectively address the challenges of their context. For instance, the teachers and children of a specific class lamented the lack of space for everyday activities, and we thus engaged in a collaborative process that led to the renovation of an abandoned room in the school basement (see Antonini & Nasi, forthcoming).
At the beginning of the co-creation process, we explained in detail the scope and general aims of the project. We also outlined the broader frame of the pilot action, underlining that all activities were to be jointly planned and implemented by all participants involved. Apart from the general topic of the pilot action (the ‘ideal school’), there were no particular constraints as to which kind of activity should be co-constructed. The timeframe for the work was one school year (i.e., from September to June in Italy). During this first introduction, we also detailed the posture that we would adopt in the co-creation process. We stressed that we would closely follow the activities and that teachers could write and contact us at any time, but we avoided giving templates of possible activities. As the planning and implementation of the activities progressed, we supported teachers in case of problems and difficulties, but we tended to avoid ‘stepping in’. We were extremely cautious regarding our direct intervention in the process, as we did not want to impose our view and be perceived as epistemically authoritative because of our academic profession. Broadly, we were afraid of surreptitiously shaping the activities according to our interests and assumptions, rather than those of teachers and children. As a result of our peripheral role in the process, the co-created activities varied consistently according to participants’ ideas and expectations, ranging from the planning of a theater play to the renovation of a room in the school basement. After the co-construction phase, these various activities were disseminated through various channels and set the basis for other activities that were co-constructed in the following school year: our collaboration with teachers and children is still ongoing.
Notably, at the end of the activities we also collected teachers’ post-hoc evaluations of the process. Even though the primary aim of the pilot action was to engage all participants in a process of co-creation of locally meaningful activities, we wanted to assess teachers’ evaluation of the research process. Since this data collection happened after completion of the activities, it did not impact on the co-creation process. However, it was consistent with the central role accorded to participants’ perspective and was planned to assess the strengths and weaknesses of our approach for future research. We collected teachers’ evaluations through semi-structured interviews, which were audio-recorded. We avoided video-recording the interviews as teachers told us that they were more comfortable without a camera. An informed consent was obtained by all participating teachers and the collected data were anonymized and stored in accordance with the data protection policy of the project and of the European Union. At any time during the project and during the interviews, participants were given the possibility to withdraw their consent and step out of the project.
The interviews involved either a single teacher or a small group of teachers who had been working together. During the interviews we roughly followed a protocol with questions (e.g., how did you find the co-creation process? What would you change if you could start anew?), but we generally let teachers talk about what mattered to them. With this method, we collected a total of ca. 4 hours of interviews, which were transcribed (Jefferson, 2004; see Caronia, 2011 on transcribing interviews as social interactions) and analyzed with an inductive, qualitative approach. We did not use specific software for data analysis, relying on repeated listening and reading of the transcribed excerpts. During numerous data sessions with the local research team, we selected major topics that seemed relevant from the teachers’ emic perspective. Specifically, a recurrent topic regarded the relationship with the researcher and our level of involvement during the process of co-creation. Several teachers mentioned this issue spontaneously, whereas others brought it up in response to our question regarding the difficulties that they experienced during the co-creation process. Thus, we isolated all sequences in which the topic was mentioned and further analyzed and discussed them in the data sessions. In the analysis of these sequences, we also considered the micro-interactional details of teachers’ talk as indexical of specific social meanings (Wooffitt & Widdicombe, 2006).
Analysis of teachers’ perception of our level of involvement
Teachers’ assessment of researchers’ involvement.
The stated reasons behind teachers’ positive and negative evaluations.
In what follows, we detail these contrasting evaluations on the basis of four excerpts from the interviews. First, we provide two emblematic examples of teachers’ positive evaluation of our posture. Second, we discuss two excerpts that are representative of teachers’ negative assessment of our level of involvement.
Emblematic examples of a positive evaluation
During the interviews, several teachers underlined their positive assessment of the drawn-back posture that we chose to adopt during the planning and implementation of the activities. Broadly, these teachers were glad that we had given them space to express and follow through their ideas. The interview with Anna and Lara was a clear example of this positive evaluation. In Ex. 1., the teachers initially express their positive opinion of the whole project, grounding it on the fact that teachers were not strictly told what needed to be done.
Excerpt 1
At the beginning of this brief excerpt, Anna refers to her professional development, stating that projects such as NEW ABC allow teachers to professionally “grow” (lines 1 and 2). In the continuation of her turn, she explains this initial statement: teachers learn new skills and expand their expertise, since there is no “expert” that imposes a specific activity (lines 3 and 4). In contrast to other kinds of projects, teachers do not have to simply accept (or not) a pre-established activity. Lara agrees with her colleague and displays her alignment in overlap with Anna’s talk (exactly, line 5). Ex. 1 is a first example that is representative of the opinion of teachers who deemed our posture appropriate. Ex. 2 shows a further excerpt from Anna’s and Lara’s interview. In this second excerpt, Anna further explains the reasons behind her positive assessment of the researchers’ drawn-back positioning.
Excerpt 2
In line 1, Anna explicitly states that our low-level involvement was “a strength of the project”. She then builds on this first assessment by referring to the different epistemic territories that pertain to the teacher and the researcher: even though a researcher can have “many competences” (line 2), teachers are better suited to make decisions about the activity, since they have a better knowledge of the specific context in which the activity takes place (you have a better idea […] if you live a reality and you know where you are, lines 3 and 4). After this reference to teachers’ knowledge of the school context, Anna states again that she appreciated our limited involvement (line 5), adding a further reason for her positive assessment: together with Lara, they had the opportunity “to be creative” (line 6). The fact that the pilot action was not rigidly planned from the beginning allowed them to creatively explore various ideas together with children. At the end of this extended turn, Anna makes again a comparison with other more ‘structured’ projects: if an external person comes and simply implements a pre-established activity, then teachers’ space becomes “kind of limited” (lines 7 and 8). With this last comparison, Anna clearly takes distance from projects in which teachers have more limited opportunities to shape the activities.
Ex. 2 is a further example of teachers’ positive assessment of our posture. Notably, Anna seems quite aligned to our own reasons behind the choice of limiting our involvement, since she referred to (a) teachers’ epistemic primacy in relation to the concrete context in which the activity was to take place and (b) the space that teachers could use to give way to their ideas and creativity.
Apart from these two emblematic excerpts, teachers were glad that we mostly let them in charge of planning and implementing the activities. As they reported, they felt trusted in their capacity to develop good and significant practices, and felt that their knowledge and competences were valued and acknowledged. Within a pilot action that was not fixedly structured from the beginning, teachers had the opportunity to ingeniously shape the unfolding of the activities according to their ideas and the affordances and challenges of the local context. As mentioned above, not all teachers shared this positive opinion. The next section accounts for teachers’ negative assessment of our limited involvement during the co-creation process.
Emblematic examples of a negative evaluation
During the interviews that followed the activities, several teachers told us that our level of involvement was not appropriate. These teachers provided various reasons behind their negative assessment, such as the lack of clarity at the beginning of the process, or the absence of external support that could help them in the classroom.
Ex. 3 is a first example of these negative assessments. The sequence was recorded towards the end of the interview, after the interviewer asked if there were any aspects of the project that the teacher found problematic. In this regard, this negative evaluation was to a certain extent ‘prompted’ by the researcher’s question.
Excerpt 3
When asked about the difficulties that she experienced during the project, Alice immediately points to the level of involvement of researchers. First, she broadly refers to the need of “clearer ideas” (line 1). Second, she reports her perspective on how the co-creation process unfolded, stating that teachers did “everything alone” (line 2). The substantive “everything” is emphatically repeated and accompanied by a reference to some of the activities (a theater play, a kamishibai representation; line 3). Notably, Alice also states that this happened to “everybody”, displaying thereby a stronger epistemic stance: she is not just expressing her own opinion, but supposedly reporting the experience of every teacher that took part in the project (line 2; see Couper-Kuhlen, 2006). As a result of this lack of external help, she experienced the project as “really demanding” (line 4). After this explicit, negative evaluation of our level of involvement, Alice concedes that her being in charge of the activities made them especially rewarding (it was rewarding in the end i don’t deny it, line 5). Nevertheless, at the end of this extended turn she reiterates the need for more clarity regarding what is possible and what is not within the project (lines 6 and 7).
The sequence in Ex. 3 is in marked contrast with the ones presented in the previous section. Whereas some teachers experienced the lack of clear guidelines as an opportunity that allowed them to creatively express their ideas, others experienced it as a stressful shortcoming that complicated their professional practice at school. In this case, Alice emphatically underlined how the researchers’ limited involvement led teachers to plan and implement the activities on their own, resulting in higher stress and a heavier workload.
The next excerpt presents a further negative evaluation. Another teacher, Maria, explicitly describes how her initial expectations were not met during the project and stresses again the lack of clear guidance.
Excerpt 4
At the beginning of this extended turn, Maria starts recounting that she had a hard time during the project (at the beginning it was hard for me, line 1). She then accounts for this initial statement by providing the reasons behind her difficulties. First, Maria underlines that she was initially “enthusiastic” about the project (lines 2 and 3), stressing thereby her commitment and willingness to be part of the activities. However, she also recounts that she later felt “abandoned” from researchers (line 4), a statement that is mitigated through various devices (i.e., the idioms quote unquote and kind of). In the following turns, Maria explains her feelings through a description of her experience during the co-creation process. This recounting is similar to Alice’s, since she also reports that she “had to do everything” (line 5). After this explicit criticism of the researchers’ involvement in the activities, Maria refers to her initial expectations, reporting that she expected some “guidelines” that could help her shape the activity (i thought you would give us some guidelines in this project, lines 6 and 7). Thus, also in this interview the need for a more fixed structure clearly emerged.
Ex. 4 is a further emblematic example of the reasons that motivated teachers’ negative assessment of our positioning during the co-creation process. Together with Ex. 3, it is representative of teachers’ reported difficulties within the project. In the next section, we juxtapose these difficulties with teachers’ positive assessments, critically discussing these contrasting evaluations in relation to the dilemma they seem to hint at.
Discussion: Outlining a dilemma in participatory action research
At the beginning of the collaboration with the pre-school and the primary school, we had to decide to what extent we would be involved in the co-creation of the activities. During various meetings with the research team, we decided to limit our involvement in order to let teachers be the main responsible for the planning and implementation of the pilot action. This cautiousness regarding a high-level involvement was supported by previous literature, which highlighted the persisting power asymmetries between the researcher and the researched within participatory action research (e.g., Gallagher, 2008; Stewart, 2006). Overall, the choice of limiting our direct interventions was effective in promoting teachers’ and children’s ideas and resulted in a set of activities that positively impacted everyday school life. However, the collaborative co-construction of the activities was also a challenging and partly problematic process for several participants, as reported in the interviews that took place at the end of the pilot action.
As the analysis illustrates, teachers expressed contrasting evaluations of our ‘peripheral’ posture, underlining its positive aspects or pointing to the difficulties that it engendered. Some teachers deemed our posture appropriate, as they felt acknowledged in their role and expertise and thought that being in charge of the activities would be fruitful for their professional development. Conversely, other teachers criticized our level of involvement, reporting a feeling of distress caused by the lack of guidance and external input. Apart from the role played by individual differences, it is worth noting that these negative evaluations were also possibly bound to the institutional ‘culture’ of a public school, in which activities are often strictly scheduled, recurrent, and organized in advance (i.e., they are at odds with the rather unpredictable character of the co-creation process; see Koutselini, 2008 on the relevance of school ‘ethos’ in participatory research).
Altogether, teachers’ contrasting evaluations point to a dilemma which is arguably ever present in participatory action research. The dilemma regards the choice between what we could call a ‘high-level’ and a ‘low-level’ involvement, understood as poles of a continuum that comprises all possible stances and postures that the research team might adopt. The choice is dilemmatic, since every positioning entails some risks and might bear problematic consequences. On the one hand, if researchers tend toward the ‘high-level involvement’ pole of the continuum, they risk being perceived as arrogant and distrusting of teachers’ ability to develop good practices on their own. Moreover, this positioning can be perceived as dismissive of teachers’ knowledge of the context, and possibly imposes ideas and pre-conceived notions that pertain to the academic milieu rather than to teachers’ and children’s exigencies and interests. Thus, a high-level involvement risks perpetuating these very same inequalities and asymmetries that participatory research aims to challenge and overcome. On the other hand, a rather ‘low’ involvement can also be problematic, as illustrated in the analysis. Researchers that tend to limit their direct intervention risk being perceived as disengaged and not particularly interested in the project. Furthermore, a low level of involvement may result in higher stress for teachers, who might be at a loss in planning and implementing activities within a project they have relatively little knowledge of. Eventually, this posture might result in activities that are problematic from the researchers’ perspective: if researchers tend to avoid any direct intervention in the process, teachers might implement activities that contrast with the ideologies that underpin the project (e.g., equality or social inclusion). Overall, each positioning along the continuum is potentially problematic and might attract teachers’ criticism and negative evaluation.
Conclusions and implications for future research
The first aim of this study was the analysis of teachers’ evaluation of our level of involvement during the co-creation process. Even though the issue of researchers’ involvement in participatory research had been already discussed (Reimer & Bruce, 1994; Black-Hawkins & Amrhein, 2014), teachers’ perspective on the matter was still relatively uncharted territory. The analysis showed that teachers gave contrasting evaluations of our ‘peripheral’ engagement during the co-creation process, highlighting its positive aspects while stressing the problematic issues that it engendered.
The second aim of the study was ‘prospective’ and oriented towards future research: based on the challenges and dilemmas emerging from teachers’ evaluations, the article aimed to provide some possible starting points for a better negotiation of teachers’ and researchers’ respective roles and responsibilities. How can researchers find a meaningful balance between a high-level and a low-level involvement during the co-creation process?
Retrospectively, the difficulties reported by teachers were mostly bound to problems in communication. Field incomprehension and miscommunication resulted in a chasm between teachers’ expectations and our own ideas regarding the co-creation process, a chasm that became visible in teachers’ reports denouncing lack of clarity and feeling of abandonment. Even though we interacted with teachers throughout the co-creation process, these challenges never emerged before the post hoc interviews. This was probably due to two main, interrelated reasons. First, we know from research on social interaction that disagreeing with the other interlocutor or asking for his/her help are face-threatening and generally ‘dispreferred’ social actions (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Pomerantz & Heritage, 2012). Therefore, teachers possibly tended to avoid criticizing our stance and admitting their difficulties during our various face-to-face interactions in the field. Second, part of the issue was probably bound to our inability to grasp teachers’ subtle displays of uneasiness. Even though teachers were not explicitly expressing their uncertainty and disagreement, we failed in grasping the ‘cues’ that were indexical of their difficulties and problems (Gumperz, 1992).
In future research, these problems could be alleviated if researchers developed an increased ability to notice and respond fluently to the contingencies of their social interactions with participants in the field. Re-interpreting the concept of Classroom Interactional Competence advanced by Steve Walsh (2011), we could think in terms of Research Interactional Competence, meant as the ability of researchers to use interaction as a tool for achieving their social and research goals in the field. If effective communication rests on the ability to use the available resources to co-ordinate social actions and reach intersubjective understanding (Goodwin, 2018; Linell, 2009), then researchers need to be able to grasp not-clearly-displayed difficulties, spot local breakdowns in intersubjectivity, understand subtle deviations from expected answers and so on. Overall, they need to be attuned to their interlocutors’ stances and enact interactional strategies that are coherent with their local research goals. This includes an ability to use social interaction to negotiate epistemic rights and responsibilities and to competently navigate processes of decision-making in the field (Stevanovic & Peräkylä, 2012). Broad research aims such as promoting teachers’ ideas and knowledge, delegating the power to decide, engaging all participants in the process of co-creation are instantiated in specific interactional episodes in the field. Thus, an awareness of the mechanisms of human social interaction can help researchers in their professional practice (see Antaki, 2011), allowing them to dialogically negotiate a locally meaningful balance between their specific research aims and participants’ ideas and expectations. Even though the relevance of effective communication in the field has been already highlighted (e.g., Frankman & Howes, 2006; Zimmerman Nilsson et al., 2018), these studies did not consider the interactional details of participants’ mutual engagement and the dialogic negotiation of epistemic rights and responsibilities, which in turn bear on the process of decision-making. Effective communication with participants is not always possible without an awareness of the ‘pragmatics’ underlying any interactional encounter. In this regard, an increased interactional competence could allow researchers to skillfully navigate the social interactions that gradually come to constitute a certain relationship with participants in the field.
These last reflections and the analysis of teachers’ perceptions have some limitations. First, the interviews were done after the conclusion of the activities. Thus, we could not re-calibrate our stance according to teachers’ evaluations and could not further inquire about puzzling elements in teachers’ accounts. For instance, we do not know if teachers’ conflicting perceptions of our involvement were bound to the specific activities that they developed, or to the role that students played in the research process. In future research, researchers could organize some brief interviews with teachers during the co-creation process in order to have the opportunity to re-direct and recalibrate the activities in a timely fashion. Second, the corpus is relatively small and not all teachers mentioned the topic of our level of involvement in the activities. In this respect, interviewing a larger cohort of teachers and specifically asking about the relationship with researchers could allow us to achieve a deeper understanding of teachers’ perception of the co-creation process and of the challenges that they experienced. Third, we did not audio or video-recorded our interactions with teachers during the co-creation process. This would have allowed us to analyze in detail our interactional shortcomings and the communicative breakdowns that occurred during our field encounters with teachers. In this respect, future research could collect data on the concrete dialogues that underpin the co-creation process, analyzing thereby the researchers’ interactional competence in dealing with the subtleties and demands of social interaction in participatory research. Altogether, future studies along these lines would provide useful knowledge on the co-construction of social relationships with participants in the field, laying a more solid foundation for the transformative potential of collaborative methodologies. As participatory methods gain increasing prominence in education, these studies and various other ‘lessons learned’ (e.g., see the numerous field reports in NEW ABC, 2024) could gradually constitute an extensive repertoire of field knowledge – field knowledge that researchers and participants could then draw from in their own projects and collaborations.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the European Commission (101004640).
