Setting the Stage: Imagining, Planning, and Facilitating Contexts for Intergenerational Inquiry

• In Event: Toward Transformative Intergenerational Collaboration: Identities, Literacies, and Contexts for Participatory Research With Youth

Abstract

Purpose & Objectives
Intergenerational inquiry is an important site for building power in our current moment; however, relationships among minoritized youth and adults in educational contexts are permeated by power dynamics, especially the colonial dynamics that animate traditional relationships between teachers and students (Camangian, 2021). Therefore, rather than presuming that intergenerational inquiry is automatically or inevitably equitable, we recognize that such collaborations must be carefully planned and mediated to create the potential for liberatory work. To that end, our paper sheds light on the pedagogical questions with which we wrestled and the decision-making processes we engaged as we imagined, constructed, and facilitated intergenerational collaborations between youth researchers and early-career teachers. In our transparency, we aim to support researchers and organizers to clarify their own imaginaries and processes as they co-create contexts for collaborative inquiry.

Theoretical Framework
We agree with Lyiscott et al. (2021) that “youth, educators, researchers, and community members have an ethical obligation to understand the dynamic social and political contexts in which all stakeholders construct identities and engage each other” (p. 366.). This obligation extends to understanding how contexts for intergenerational collaborations are themselves constructed, informed by the planning that precedes them, the facilitation that mediates them, and the critical reflection that follows their enactments. As qualitative researchers and critical practitioners, we draw on reflexivity (Luttrell, 2010) and inquiry as stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2015) to fully conceptualize the layered and iterative affective imaginaries, pedagogical processes, and reflective practices that provide the infrastructure for meaningful intergenerational inquiry.

Methods & Data Sources
This paper is based on intergenerational inquiry in context with a cross-course collaboration between two universities and an afterschool youth research program. As program coordinators and instructors, we collaborated to organize meetings between youth researchers from a dual-enrollment course and early-career teachers enrolled in a graduate action research class. During combined class sessions, youth and adult researchers shared their ongoing work and provided feedback to one another. In this paper, we analyze transcripts from our planning and debrief sessions, as well as analyzing agendas created for the combined classes. We utilize narrative analysis of data (Connelly & Clandinin, 2004), reading for the stories we tell about ourselves and about youth and adults engaged in intergenerational inquiry; these stories animate the plans we make for, and the meanings we make of, these sessions.

Findings & Significance
First, our analysis reveals the importance of trust among organizers. We explore how we developed trust in one another through demonstrations of self-reflexivity and explicit expressions of our individual and collective values. Second, our analysis demonstrates the significance of acknowledging the persistence of and strategically disrupting patterns of adult dominance in intergenerational contexts -- including in ourselves as adult organizers. Finally, we find that intergenerational inquiry also requires time for preparing and debriefing in age-specific cohorts, where youth and adults have the space to safely make sense of their experiences. In our presentation, we will explore each of these findings in turn, among others, and share our recommendations for organizing contexts for intergenerational inquiry.

Authors

• Karen Zaino, Miami University (OH)

• Mijin Yeom, Queens College - CUNY