Song: Situating Cogenerative Dialogue in a Cosmopolitan Ethic
Viewed: 42 - Published at: 8 years ago
Artist: Christopher Emdin
Year: 2013Viewed: 42 - Published at: 8 years ago
1. Introduction
Pioneering the practice in 1999, ROTH and TOBIN (2004) explain how cogenerative dialogue has become an integral part of their research methodology in exploring classroom teaching. The cogenerative dialogue has been defined as a conversation participants have about a shared experience (TOBIN, 2005). By creating a field to talk about classroom learning, they provide participants an opportunity to reflect on shared experiences and they open arenas where participants can take collective responsibility for the results in the classroom. Before ending a cogenerative dialogue, participants "co-generate" a plan of action geared toward improving classroom teaching and learning. Cogenerative dialogues frequently change both teaching and learning practices because stakeholders create spaces where an alignment between student learning strategies and teaching practices can occur. By creating a field where stakeholders can talk across the boundaries of race, class, age, and classroom roles, cogenerative dialogues transform the conventional classroom into an arena where all participants have a vested interest in a group designed and implemented notion of success. Considering the collective goals of cogenerative dialogues, and their tendency to create transformed communities of practice, researchers must co-generate a way of addressing the ethical issues that arise in their many communities of practice. Researchers need to philosophically and practically reflect on the ethicality of cogenerative dialogues and ensure that their practice is both ethically and morally rich. The need for a critical look at the ethics of cogenerative dialogues is necessary because of the very nature of many of the participants in the study. In our research, we work with high school students who in many cases have been disadvantaged academically, socially and financially by societal hegemonic structures within and outside of schools. Our analysis of cogenerative dialogues therefore considers the caveats that may impede upon the ethical implementation of this practice. We hope to move beyond the structures that may negatively affect our students and create opportunities to amplify student voice by attempting to increase beneficence for all involved while concurrently enacting genuinely ethical practices.
1.1 Responding to STITH and ROTH (2006)
STITH and ROTH (2006) contend that students and researchers can tackle some of the ethical issues that arise in classroom research by using cogenerative dialogues. Addressing the fact that earlier works on cogenerative dialogues do not implicitly speak to ethical issues, STITH and ROTH's (2006) paper leads us to inquire about the philosophical and practical measures that researchers can undertake in order to promote ethical practice in cogenerative dialogues. Furthermore, STITH and ROTH's (2006) writing provides a backdrop to our investigation by their consideration of the implications of enacted research practices in urban schools.
1.2 Proposing a format for ethical cogenerative dialogue practice
Functioning under the premise that there are multiple layers working simultaneously in the enactment of cogenerative dialogues (STITH & ROTH, 2006), the necessity of a similar multi-layered approach to viewing and analyzing the research act is vital. Our proposal for ethical cogenerative dialogue practice therefore consists of a synthesis of the Belmont Report's focus on participant beneficence and a critical interpretation of fourth generation evaluation pro- cedures. We further enrich our approach to cogenerative dialogues by establishing the practice in a philosophical approach to cosmopolitanism. We believe that establishing cogenerative dialogue in the cosmopolitan ideal can minimize potential research harms while maximizing participant beneficence. Through the process of enacting our proposal for ethical cogenerative dialogues, we have been able to consider how researchers can avoid the potential pitfalls of strict adherence to prescribed authenticity criteria by making important distinctions and adaptations to fourth generation evaluation procedures. Our goal is to support a living, tactile and authentic plan of action for an ethical approach to cogenerative dialogues that will benefit all research participants.
2. Historical Situating Human Subject Research
2.1 Research practice as a microcosm of societal practice
The extent to which people have treated one another with respect and civility, or a profound lack thereof, has had a resounding influence on human history. Our collective understandings of what is acceptable and principled research entails of the process of viewing, critiquing, and analyzing what has been done through the lens of both past and present day notions of morality. As a microcosm of western society, researchers make judgments about goodness, fairness, and equity based on generalized notions of these attributes, which have been formed and reformed over space and time. These generalized notions take the form of the period's dominant ideology and inevitably sustain the hierarchical nature of western society where some knowledges are affirmed while others are subjugated. As each decade passes, our collective societal perspectives change regarding our notions of ethics. The emergence of subjugated knowledges and beliefs from communities who have been either literally or metaphorically colonized find their ways into mainstream discourse and redefine the meaning of ethics. Consequently, issues that once were at the center of heated discussions may become normalized while some practices that were once commonly accepted are now seen as unethical.
2.2 Unethical human subject research and the Belmont Report
In human subject research, ethical issues abound. While the potential hazards have been conventionally viewed in terms of the possible harms and benefits learned from the study's results, the history of American human subject research recounts a story unconscionable neglect. In the 1979 Belmont Report, the authors attempted to address unprincipled uses of human subjects and outlined guidelines for researchers to follow that promote the humane treatment of all research participants. Such universal proclamations were needed in the 1970's, particularly in the United States, when the world reeled from the shocking news of the Tuskegee Project. In that study, medical researchers who were studying the effects syphilis had on the body denied African-American participants the common treatment of penicillin for the disease long after it became widely available to study the debilitating progression of the disease. Such sadistic and unscrupulous treatment of participants by medical professionals popularized the term "research crime"; a term previously coined to describe Nazi doctors at the Nuremberg Trails. The American Research Community issued the Belmont Report to respond to the unethical treatment of human subjects seen not only in the Tuskegee Project but also in other research studies such as Stanley MILGRAM's studies and the Willowbrook Hepatitis Study (GRINELL, 2004; SISTI & KAPLAN, 2004). Based on a previous proposal by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, the Belmont Report emphasized the need to treat all human subjects with respect, to ensure their safety, and protect them from possible harms that may be inflicted by participation in the research study.
2.3 Contextualizing the potential harms of cogenerative dialogue on the continuum of human subject research
The potential harms of educational research, such as cogenerative dialogue, may seem almost inconsequential in comparison to the atrocities committed in the Tuskegee Project but in order to ensure the ethical treatment of urban youth our research practices should be just as strictly scrutinized. Often, educational researchers have glibly neglected the protocols set in place by their respective institutional review board and have tried to avert its authority in the name of academic freedom (ANDERSON, 2003; PRITCHARD, 2002). Educational inquiry does not pose the same type of immediate health risk to human subjects as medical studies, but teachers/researchers share a similar degree of symbolic authority as medical researchers and the potential harms of educational research, like medical studies, may have far reaching social and psychological consequences. Accordingly, school based researchers have the moral directive to ensure that participants are afforded unconditional fairness and that they benefit to the greatest extent possible from the results of the research. Researchers must also exhaustively pursue justice and beneficence for their participants by minimizing potential harms and taking-on any burdens associated with the study (OFFICE FOR PROTECTION FROM RESEARCH RISKS, 1991).
2.4 Researcher awareness of potential harms is instrumental in creating ethicality
In the case of cogenerative dialogue, researchers can only realize participant beneficence by having a profound understanding of authenticity criteria (GUBA & LINCOLN, 1989) and its relation to stakeholder fairness. During the practice of cogenerative dialogue, researchers need to be aware of the ethical forewarnings that are inherent in the relational nature of this type of investigation. There also needs to be a further awareness that achieving participant beneficence is an ongoing process that entails different perspectives on ethicality dependent on the perspectives of the researchers, participants, and the larger group being impacted by the study. The attainment of communality and a unification of varying perspectives on ethicality, unity, and stakeholder beneficence should emerge paramount in cogenerative dialogues yet this can only happen if researchers fully acknowledge the caveats and potential pitfalls of the practice.
3. Introducing Cosmopolitanism as an Ethical Best Practice
Educational research has highlighted how ways of knowing vary by socio- economic, racial and cultural backgrounds. In instances like cogenerative dialogue, where these multiple ways of knowing come into intimate contact with each other, the goal of co-generating a plan of action for the betterment of a classroom is met with different reactions by students and teachers. Students, for example, are often ambivalent when confronted with the proposal to engage in such inclusive, mutually shared acts that impact the classroom. At times, students are rightly cautious about the authoritative power of a "co-generated plan" and may sense that they are being co-opted to support the teacher in his/her rule over the class. Furthermore, the act of co-generating a plan that impacts wide spread practice means a shift in students beliefs, thoughts, and actions. We are implying that a student's transition from a lived world that has been created and reinforced by experiences with home, school, and community that limit student agency and stifles their voice will be seamless. In actuality, such a transition is multilayered and complex. For the teacher, engaging in cogenerative dialogues means a transition from the comfort of reproducing already existent practice. It also means a removal of oneself from the safety of practice that is supported by the institution of school/schooling. As a result of the emergent need for ontological shifts, research participants may experience feelings of trepidation and anxiety. When cogenerative dialogues are enacted that do not authenticate these experiences, they can lead to research practices that are unethical because they ignore these vital socio-emotional elements and thereby stress participant harms instead of benefits.
3.1 Expanded student roles can be troublesome without expanded student communities
Ethical cogenerative dialogues therefore necessitate an awareness of the existence of not only the socio-emotional divides among participants but also the socio-economic, racial, gender and cultural differences. In order to circumnavigate the misalignment that emerges as a result of the forced interaction of varying social perspectives (socio-emotional, socio-economic, socio-cultural), the creation of a unifying agent that recognizes all manners of difference yet tran- scends the existent boundaries is necessary. The philosophical approach of cosmopolitanism can act as a catalytic force to navigate these differences while simultaneously rooting practice in a democratic ideal that stresses stakeholder beneficence.
3.2 Creating cosmopolitan practices in cogenerative dialogue
Cosmopolitanism is founded on the concept that all of humanity is a member of a single community that is bound by shared morals and ideals. This notion concurrently supports a move away from nationality and one towards the collective responsibility obligation for people who traditionally would be perceived as foreign or unfamiliar (APPIAH, 2006). In cosmopolitan practice, the bonds of family, friendship and camaraderie are extended to all (BHABA, 1996). Tailoring this notion to cogenerative dialogues entails of a process through which the porous boundaries of fields are flooded with communal practice. We theorize the enactment of communal practice in multiple fields within a particular structure as an attainment of cosmopolitanism. In order to achieve this goal, there needs to be an ongoing and continually enacted praxis that aims to neutralize the impact of interactions that magnify the ethical inequalities that emerge as a result of the enactment of social life. These inequalities are attributed to teachers and students and are based on factors such as race, class and ethnicity. By applying the cosmopolitan ideal in all interactions with participants in a study, we embody the belief that the research privileges no particular way of knowing or being. The student also develops a taste for cultures that vary from her/his own and an acceptance for matters that arise that are foreign to his/her localized ways of knowing. This practice therefore embraces a philosophy that ensures collective benefits and harms for all participants. The move to establish a cogenerative dialogue research group within the classroom while other participants are engaged in other activities that benefit the learning community at large thereby becomes a practice for the benefit of all. The enactment of this philosophy thereby transcends the conventional dual nature of differences between the classroom and cogenerative dialogue fields that emerge in the enactment of traditional cogenerative dialogues.
4. Maximizing Participant Beneficence
To address ethical practice in cogenerative dialogues, researchers need to deeply consider what participant beneficence means in their study. The notion of beneficence in educational research inherently requires a researcher being/doing good and causing as little harm as possible to participants in the study. This notion is often remiss in addressing the issue of beneficence as enacted among research participants. As we explore ethics in cogenerative dialogues, we approach the issue of beneficence as an ideal that must be worked toward by not only researchers but all that have a vested interest in the study. In order words, the process of attaining beneficence must be enacted by multiple participants across fields.
4.1 The constant pursuit of ethical practice
Adhering to the ethos of cosmopolitanism, we have established the need for all stakeholders' perspectives to be acknowledged and addressed without privileging any one set of voices. We have also developed the need to develop communal practice in multiple fields. Carrying out this plan requires researchers who are not only mindful enough to utilize participant perspectives in their work but are willing to undergo a process where immediacy in engaging in collective ethical practice is commonplace and where actors (students, teachers, researchers) become an embodiment of ethical practice. In Francisco VARELA's work, a guiding point for the attainment of beneficence thereby consists of the realization that "no moral principle is realizable in itself, since the analytic process makes it progressively clearer that we are doomed to be never satisfied with any sets of hopes and expectations, however rational they appear to be" (1999, p.64). With the awareness that no research practices can be absolutely ethical and devoid of harms, we focus on the collective quest for attainment of living authenticity criteria.
4.2 Striving to attain living authenticity criteria
Our ethical goal in using cogenerative dialogues should be a quest to root prac- tice in fairness while bringing a union between classroom practices and onto- logical, educative, catalytic, and tactile authenticity to stakeholders. The question of what is ethical in cogenerative dialogue research therefore needs to be also considered in light of student variables such as their ego, self identity, and per- sonality. These nuances often go unchecked in cogenerative dialogues and vary from the macro collective social differences (socio-emotional, socio-economic dif- ference) that we and other researchers have discussed in our work.
4.3 Addressing insularity through communality
Not addressing these issues in our work insinuates that we either do not value them or that we do not consider them as having an effect on the cogenerative dialogue and classroom fields. What happens when we do not address these issues is that they become manifested over the course of the enactment of social life within and outside of the cogenerative dialogue fields. This is likely to occur often when students come from families outside the school that do not give them the social and emotional support that they need to be empowered socially, aca- demically or otherwise. The solidarity and comfort developed within the cogenerative dialogue then becomes an integral part of the students' lived world and sharing the results by allowing other people to access the structures become problematic. To these types of students, the issue of sharing what has evolved is difficult because the practice has become a personal resource. The cogenerative dialogue can develop to be a part of a students' family that he/she is not willing to share with the rest of the classroom or the rest of the world. Sharing the practice can trigger emotional fall-out if the student has previously been emotionally sheltered or psychologically nurtured by the cogenerative dialogue field. Furthermore, when there is an entry of new participants into the cogenerative dialogue or when the insular nature of the cogenerative dialogue becomes threatened, levels of tension that are directly related to ego, identity and personality oftentimes become evident and are difficult to address because they have already spiraled out of control.
4.4 Student enactments of cosmopolitan practices
Prior to the establishment of the need to create a school community or generating cogenerative dialogues as a means to ultimately bettering participants across multiple fields, students in New York High School were not necessarily interested in allowing new members to join the cogenerative dialogue group. They exhibited multiple instances of asynchronous actions (COLLINS, 2004) with students who were not entrenched in the cogenerative dialogue ideal, and privileged themselves when referring to the entire class group by making statements like "they really need to get it together" or "that's why we can't learn nothing because the rest of the class ain't focused like we are." The insularity of the cogenerative dialogue field combined with the display of identity and ego affiliated with cogenerative dialogue participants raised issues of ethics that surround student interactions between classroom and cogenerative dialogue fields. The enactment of a consistent move towards cosmopolitan action aids in the development of the students' ability to embrace the cogenerative dialogue field, the classroom field, and the school field concurrently. This also alleviates the tension that arises when personal issues/differences among students that are based more on personality than culture become apparent.
In an instance in Liberty High School, Anthony, a member of the cogenerative dialogue group, developed a strategy for keeping all members of the classroom field on task by tapping students on the shoulder when they exhibited behaviors that appeared to be distracting.
Anthony: I think ... I need to be more focused ... ya know, I need more focus. Ed Lehner: Is there anything we can do as a class to help that?
Anthony: Well, um, when one of the students is not like as focused as the rest of the classmates, like/should like, we should pull him to the side. And we should tell him, like, "you have to get this, you know, like finished, everyone else is done."
Ed Lehner: Okay. So you mean someone who is not focused. You want someone to pull him to the side?
Anthony: Like –
Ed Lehner (Motioning to Anthony) Go ahead ...
Anthony: I am saying like, say I am talking and all you all is like doin your work, and I am in my own world, and it is like time for the Regents and we have to start prep, it is prep time, you all could be like this (tapping Keon on the shoulder). And say "come on son, it is time to do your work." (Motioning with his hands)
Ed Lehner: Okay, so kind of a way to get him focused.
Anthony: Yeah, without disturbing the other students. Ya-all can get be back on track and ready for the test.
4.5 Creating the cosmopolitan "we" in cogenerative dialogue
In this vignette, we see the seamless transition between the viewing the self as "I," "We," and one with Anthony using himself as a representative for the larger classroom group. When Anthony enacts this distributed management practice in the classroom, we see the multiple layers he has to navigate in order to enact this cosmopolitan practice (communalism across fields) of being obligated to ensure that a fellow classmate (Keon) was paying attention. He rolls his eyes and shakes his head in response to his classmates' action and thereby establishes that he disapproves of his colleague's actions. Without the presence of a cosmopolitan obligation to his classmate and to the class, the interaction may have stopped there and resulted in the display of asynchrony and negative emotional energy between the two classmates. However, Anthony manages to put his personal feelings aside and ensure that both he and his classmate are paying attention. This notion of distributed classroom management occurred as a result of Anthony's desire to not only develop as a student or to be able to access the teacher for his benefit but to enact success for the entire class on an upcoming standardized exam. His use of the word "we" as he articulates his plan to get students to pay attention in class speaks to that fact. When he later enacts distributed classroom management practice, the emergence of his personal beliefs becomes evident as he expresses a level of disdain for his classmates action when he rolls his eyes and shakes his head in response to his action. Despite this reaction, he was able to put his disapproval of his classmate aside and enact the practice of tapping him to get his attention and ensuring that they both continue with the lesson. This instance speaks to the ability of the students to attain "a taste" for other people’s ways of knowing, being and interacting while maintaining the larger more cosmopolitan goal of success on the upcoming exam for all students. The question that arises is how actors in the cogenerative dialogue and classroom fields become an embodiment of ethical practice when ethical practice contains multiple definitions for different individuals? Furthermore, how does an attainment of ethical practice become actualized in interplay with issues that arise in LINCOLON and GUBA’s fourth generation evaluation criteria such as prolonged engagement and tactile assessment?
An approach that holds all of the afore mentioned considerations in high regard leads to an investigation of the ethical dimensions of cogenerative dialogues that includes the multiple perspectives of participants engaged in the various fields involved in the practice. In cogenerative dialogues, all the spaces of the school, both physical and symbolic, are influenced because stakeholders interact in these diverse fields. Since only some students are engaged in cogenerative dialogues but all students are engaged in the class, we need to study the interactions between participants and non-participants more closely. We also need to analyze how they view each other and the consistently changing classroom field. Students who are only in the classroom are not always privy to what is generated in cogenerative dialogue in spite of the fact that they are inevitably affected by its repercussions. This leads us to an investigation into a critical ethical dimension where questions are closely tied to the issue of beneficence. Also, such practices can be viewed as privileging the cogenerative dialogue group while maximizing, or at least not considering, participant harms for the classroom group (ANDERSON, 1998; PRESIDENT'S COMMISSION, 1982). This definition forces us to look at cogenerative dialogues more critically and ask the following questions about its practices: While the classroom teacher and the participants in cogenerative dialogues have built a plan of action to change the classroom, how are the other participants in the classroom field affected by the changes? Does the collective personality of the cogenerative dialogue group infringe on the pre- established norms in the classroom? Does the cogenerative dialogue create a hierarchy within the classroom where participants are at the pinnacle of the hierarchy and non-participants are relegated to being placed lower on a socio- emotional totem pole? And most importantly, how are student whose voices have been privileged by engaging in cogenerative dialogues interact with students who are non-participants?
5. The Potential Pitfalls of Authenticity Criteria
As researchers concerned with being ethical in our interactions with all students, we consistently utilize various means to attain ethical practice. Utilizing established criteria that appear to have been successful for other researchers appears to be a wise approach to engaging in ethical practice. However, as time progresses and we become more entrenched in the research, the roles that generalized notions play in the research act become less valuable. To engage in truly ethical work, conventional methods do not have to be ignored but they need to be critiqued and tailored to meet the specific needs of different populations. There is also a need to explore the limitations of conventional ethnographic tools of analysis in measuring ethicality.
5.1 The problem of prolonged engagement
In research practices, GUBA and LINCOLN's (1989) notion of prolonged engagement involves researchers developing convivial relationships with actors within a research project with the goal of establishing and building rapport that transcends the traditional differences usually associated with researchers and participants. The prolonged engagement afforded by cogenerative dialogues usually greatly benefits research participants. However the lengthening of engagement needs to be closely monitored by researchers in order to maximize participant beneficence. In our experience, researchers need to uncover nuances in the nature of the research that interfere with a seamless enactment of ethical practice that should occur as a result of prolonged engagement. The theoretical framework usually subscribed to in cogenerative dialogues acknowledges the influence of multiple fields on each other as a fundamental component of research. Of the multiple fields where the researcher interacts with the students, the most consistent interactions occur within cogenerative dialogue and the classroom. A close look at how the roles of researcher and participants play out over time in both of these fields demonstrates that the progression of time is directly linked to the building of communal practice within cogenerative dialogues. Students and teachers who have established policies that truly embody the cogenerative dialogue creed of no voice being privileged may be more likely to speak openly about a wide array of issues with each other. Usually these participants eat together, co-generate plans of action for the classroom, and in many instances become a pseudo-family. As the actors within this field spend more time together, the intimate connections between participants are so tightly bound that when they move into the classroom field (where they interact with other stakeholders), they maintain their allegiances to their cogenerative dialogue team and therefore create a division between cogenerative dialogue participants and non-participants. The ethical issues that arise from this division are fasci- nating because of the fact that the teacher/researcher spends a large amount of time with both participants in the classroom and the cogenerative dialogue. The cogenerative dialogue group receives the benefit of prolonged engagement whereas the classroom group has less access to the teacher. The researcher facilitates relationships that develop trust and collective responsibility in the cogenerative dialogue group and does not engage in similar relationships with other stakeholders. This easily could transform into a preferential treatment of the cogenerative dialogue participants in the classroom field. The goal of prolonged engagement is therefore only a benefit when there are specific shared experiences between all stakeholders regardless of the primary field of interaction with the researcher or each other. At the essence of the discussion of ethics as it is played out between cogenerative dialogue participants and other participants in the research study, is therefore an analysis of beneficence as it relates to all stakeholders involved in prolonged engagement.
5.2 When communality morphs into gang behavior
Both of you should have a word with Cameron because he is not going to listen to anyone else in the school except you two. Research Group! What does the research team do anyway? Because to me, you all look like a gang!
One day, about three months into our research at Liberty High School, Mrs. Smith, the school safety officer, inadvertently warned us of the potential ethical issues that cogenerative dialogues had brought to our school. The sense of security and belonging that a gang provides had become afforded by our practice and when we (the cogenerative dialogue group) interacted with people in other fields, we were perceived as a gang. In further analysis of our interactions with other students and staff, we looked to pinpoint how and when these issues emerged. When we first starting cogenerative dialogues, classroom practices had changed so dramatically that we were temporarily blind to the ancillary effects they were having on a few students. As teachers/researchers who were directly affected by our research practice, we became so entrenched in a cyclic and insular pattern of teaching, learning, and transforming our practice that we did not see that the process of our building solidarity with students often exclusively privileged our teacher/researcher roles over other school staff. Relationships had evolved and developed with such a genuine sense of respect and camaraderie that teachers momentarily lost sight of the students' larger need to transport newly learned skills into other fields with adults. When witnessing this exclusivity, which was brought on by prolonged engagement, we had to grapple with the need to nuance fourth generation evaluation processes into our practice.
5.3 Addressing the unethicality of exclusivity through cosmopolitanism
Although there were many positive results from the practice of cogenerative dialogues, we needed to venture to the next level of communality in order to ensure the beneficence of not only one group of students but of other students and staff. Our enactment of an insular self sustaining and self benefiting research practice provides an instance of "group nationalism" in which the cogenerative dialogue field becomes a metaphorical nation that considers itself as self sustaining and separate from interactions with other nations/fields. This serves as a contrast to the cosmopolitan ideals that guide our notion of beneficence for all participants in a study. If we perceive multiple locations where actors in social life interact with each other as separate fields, we acknowledge that the fields take on unique, self defined roles. The porous boundaries of the fields therefore can become clogged with the confluence of an emerging group dynamic and the fact that all participants within the specific field are attaining immediate results. When the participants within the cogenerative dialogue field come into contact with other people who have a vested interest in their own well being, issues of ethics abound. A division between the cogenerative dialogue group and the rest of the school develops and the ideology of a community that is responsible for and obligated to the agency of all participants becomes destroyed. This practice also develops into a sheltering of the cogenerative dialogue participants from the realities that exist beyond the walls of their field. The reality of the dynamics that guide social life require that even if we do not cultivate a cosmopolitan ideal within cogenerative dialogues, we are still forced to interact within a shared cosmos. The lack of a cosmopolitan ideal therefore leads to an instance where the initial benefits for participants that were generated by cogenerative dialogues exponentially decrease as they are replaced by harms such as alienation, inability to adjust to the larger group and development of reciprocal contemptuous feelings between the cogenerative dialogue participants and larger classroom participants. We must therefore cultivate a strong cosmopolitan ideal among all participants affected by cogenerative dialogues while maintaining a recursive relationship between the cosmopolitan ideal and issues related to the harms and benefits of a particular research study.
6. Analyzing the Benefits and Harms of Cogenerative Dialogue
Although STITH and ROTH rightly claim that cogenerative dialogues are intended to be used to "produce locally relevant understandings and recommendations for future actions" (2006, ¶18), an awareness that local relevance varies among local fields is necessary for the practice of ethical research practice. A plan can be co- generated within a cogenerative dialogue that encompasses local understandings that are unique and beneficial only to the cogenerative dialogue participants. In such an instance, the fact that the researcher is involved in prolonged engagement with a certain group of students functions as a detriment to an entire classroom or school as the needs of only a small number of participants is being met.
6.1 The problem of prolonged engagement
In an attempt to lay out a comparison between harms and benefits of engaging in the research act, laying out the ratio of harms to benefits seems like an effective way to make comparisons. In mathematics, the ratio is seen as a linear relationship between two quantities. While the ratio of one quantity to another equals to an even distribution when they are of the same numerical value, in the case of cogenerative dialogues, an equal distribution of quantities of harms to benefits presupposes that the values of each harm and benefit are equal. When engaging in the cogenerative dialogue, we function with the assumption that this is not the case because of the general aim of the particular research act (to benefit the entire classroom field). However, as explained earlier, the goal of attaining truly ethical research, on an even playing field (the classroom), leaves the cogenerative dialogue team better equipped for success than the team that represents the classroom field. The ethical dilemma is therefore ensuring that the benefits not only far outweigh the harms, but that the long-term effects of the harms exponentially decrease while the effects of the benefits exponentially increase. In interactions with inner city students who have developed the ability to hone survival skills and create mechanisms that ensure the preservation of self, the process of creating this even playing field where the team that represents the cogenerative dialogue team is just as equipped for success as the rest of the classroom is what is needed in order to truly actualize ethical practice. An often understated psycho-social dimension that impacts the tactical authenticity of the research act influences the role that self-preservation, ego and personality play in the distribution of benefits among all participants. According to LINCOLN and GUBA tactical authenticity occurs when "all stakeholders and others at risk are provided with the opportunity to provide inputs" (1989, p.250). We would expand this notion to include all stakeholders feeling obligated to ensure that they are all accessing all available resources and are all meeting a collective goal. The interplay between the cogenerative dialogue squad and the classroom participants involve the cogenerative dialogue participants' feelings of accomplishment, responsibility, camaraderie and a desire to maintain the positive emotional energy generated in the cogenerative dialogue pitted against possible feelings of exclusion, jealousy, and inadequacy of the larger class group. This interplay certainly impacts the display of tactical authenticity in the research act. If the interplay between the students is being observed from the perspective of the non-participants in cogenerative dialogues, tactical authenticity is almost non existent. Full empowerment to act becomes truncated by the emotional climate of the classroom and can only become actualized through the enactment of an approach to a larger democratic ideal.
6.2 Cogenerative dialogue as a seedbed for cosmopolitanism
In order to attain this cosmopolitan ideal, Inner city youth dispositions to take pride and ownership of their lived worlds should be utilized as a tool to transform the cogenerative dialogue into an arena where all participants then belong to a single community that can be cultivated. A student at New York High School discusses the intimate relationship that she has with her neighborhood and describes this relationship in the following sentence: "I live in 'Development City', that's my hood, we ride or die out there. My block, my building, the whole Development."
In interactions with inner-city students, it is phenomenal to look at the allegiances that students pledge to their buildings, blocks and neighborhoods and the way that these relationships guide their interactions with each other. The shift from block to building to neighborhood to region and the way that these shifts seamlessly occur when an individual or group identity is challenged speaks to the existence of an already established cosmopolitan way of being in student culture that greatly impacts our perceptions of what is ethical research practice in cogenerative dialogues. There is an apparent division between the culture generated within one building and another building even if they are in the same housing development. However, if issues arise that create tension between that housing development and another one, there is a joining of forces; a natural obligation that the two buildings have for each other that surpasses the fact that they are two isolated self sustaining entities. Concurrently, if there is an argument about boroughs within New York City, students immediately form alliances among varying buildings, neighborhoods and blocks in order to support their borough, state, or even coast.
6.3 Addressing the unethicality of exclusivity through cosmopolitanism
In essence, we believe that the framework for the attainment of truly ethical cogenerative dialogue practice involves a critical look at existent practice and a constant push towards the larger goal of beneficence that encompass all participants. The degree to which ethical participant research is realized is inextricably interlocked into stakeholders' abilities to look beyond the insularity of the cogenerative dialogue and embrace a larger vision of community. When members participate in cogenerative dialogue, they must collectively resist the in- clination to build solidarity that benefits only a few and remain compelled to unite under a cosmopolitan vision.
Pioneering the practice in 1999, ROTH and TOBIN (2004) explain how cogenerative dialogue has become an integral part of their research methodology in exploring classroom teaching. The cogenerative dialogue has been defined as a conversation participants have about a shared experience (TOBIN, 2005). By creating a field to talk about classroom learning, they provide participants an opportunity to reflect on shared experiences and they open arenas where participants can take collective responsibility for the results in the classroom. Before ending a cogenerative dialogue, participants "co-generate" a plan of action geared toward improving classroom teaching and learning. Cogenerative dialogues frequently change both teaching and learning practices because stakeholders create spaces where an alignment between student learning strategies and teaching practices can occur. By creating a field where stakeholders can talk across the boundaries of race, class, age, and classroom roles, cogenerative dialogues transform the conventional classroom into an arena where all participants have a vested interest in a group designed and implemented notion of success. Considering the collective goals of cogenerative dialogues, and their tendency to create transformed communities of practice, researchers must co-generate a way of addressing the ethical issues that arise in their many communities of practice. Researchers need to philosophically and practically reflect on the ethicality of cogenerative dialogues and ensure that their practice is both ethically and morally rich. The need for a critical look at the ethics of cogenerative dialogues is necessary because of the very nature of many of the participants in the study. In our research, we work with high school students who in many cases have been disadvantaged academically, socially and financially by societal hegemonic structures within and outside of schools. Our analysis of cogenerative dialogues therefore considers the caveats that may impede upon the ethical implementation of this practice. We hope to move beyond the structures that may negatively affect our students and create opportunities to amplify student voice by attempting to increase beneficence for all involved while concurrently enacting genuinely ethical practices.
1.1 Responding to STITH and ROTH (2006)
STITH and ROTH (2006) contend that students and researchers can tackle some of the ethical issues that arise in classroom research by using cogenerative dialogues. Addressing the fact that earlier works on cogenerative dialogues do not implicitly speak to ethical issues, STITH and ROTH's (2006) paper leads us to inquire about the philosophical and practical measures that researchers can undertake in order to promote ethical practice in cogenerative dialogues. Furthermore, STITH and ROTH's (2006) writing provides a backdrop to our investigation by their consideration of the implications of enacted research practices in urban schools.
1.2 Proposing a format for ethical cogenerative dialogue practice
Functioning under the premise that there are multiple layers working simultaneously in the enactment of cogenerative dialogues (STITH & ROTH, 2006), the necessity of a similar multi-layered approach to viewing and analyzing the research act is vital. Our proposal for ethical cogenerative dialogue practice therefore consists of a synthesis of the Belmont Report's focus on participant beneficence and a critical interpretation of fourth generation evaluation pro- cedures. We further enrich our approach to cogenerative dialogues by establishing the practice in a philosophical approach to cosmopolitanism. We believe that establishing cogenerative dialogue in the cosmopolitan ideal can minimize potential research harms while maximizing participant beneficence. Through the process of enacting our proposal for ethical cogenerative dialogues, we have been able to consider how researchers can avoid the potential pitfalls of strict adherence to prescribed authenticity criteria by making important distinctions and adaptations to fourth generation evaluation procedures. Our goal is to support a living, tactile and authentic plan of action for an ethical approach to cogenerative dialogues that will benefit all research participants.
2. Historical Situating Human Subject Research
2.1 Research practice as a microcosm of societal practice
The extent to which people have treated one another with respect and civility, or a profound lack thereof, has had a resounding influence on human history. Our collective understandings of what is acceptable and principled research entails of the process of viewing, critiquing, and analyzing what has been done through the lens of both past and present day notions of morality. As a microcosm of western society, researchers make judgments about goodness, fairness, and equity based on generalized notions of these attributes, which have been formed and reformed over space and time. These generalized notions take the form of the period's dominant ideology and inevitably sustain the hierarchical nature of western society where some knowledges are affirmed while others are subjugated. As each decade passes, our collective societal perspectives change regarding our notions of ethics. The emergence of subjugated knowledges and beliefs from communities who have been either literally or metaphorically colonized find their ways into mainstream discourse and redefine the meaning of ethics. Consequently, issues that once were at the center of heated discussions may become normalized while some practices that were once commonly accepted are now seen as unethical.
2.2 Unethical human subject research and the Belmont Report
In human subject research, ethical issues abound. While the potential hazards have been conventionally viewed in terms of the possible harms and benefits learned from the study's results, the history of American human subject research recounts a story unconscionable neglect. In the 1979 Belmont Report, the authors attempted to address unprincipled uses of human subjects and outlined guidelines for researchers to follow that promote the humane treatment of all research participants. Such universal proclamations were needed in the 1970's, particularly in the United States, when the world reeled from the shocking news of the Tuskegee Project. In that study, medical researchers who were studying the effects syphilis had on the body denied African-American participants the common treatment of penicillin for the disease long after it became widely available to study the debilitating progression of the disease. Such sadistic and unscrupulous treatment of participants by medical professionals popularized the term "research crime"; a term previously coined to describe Nazi doctors at the Nuremberg Trails. The American Research Community issued the Belmont Report to respond to the unethical treatment of human subjects seen not only in the Tuskegee Project but also in other research studies such as Stanley MILGRAM's studies and the Willowbrook Hepatitis Study (GRINELL, 2004; SISTI & KAPLAN, 2004). Based on a previous proposal by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, the Belmont Report emphasized the need to treat all human subjects with respect, to ensure their safety, and protect them from possible harms that may be inflicted by participation in the research study.
2.3 Contextualizing the potential harms of cogenerative dialogue on the continuum of human subject research
The potential harms of educational research, such as cogenerative dialogue, may seem almost inconsequential in comparison to the atrocities committed in the Tuskegee Project but in order to ensure the ethical treatment of urban youth our research practices should be just as strictly scrutinized. Often, educational researchers have glibly neglected the protocols set in place by their respective institutional review board and have tried to avert its authority in the name of academic freedom (ANDERSON, 2003; PRITCHARD, 2002). Educational inquiry does not pose the same type of immediate health risk to human subjects as medical studies, but teachers/researchers share a similar degree of symbolic authority as medical researchers and the potential harms of educational research, like medical studies, may have far reaching social and psychological consequences. Accordingly, school based researchers have the moral directive to ensure that participants are afforded unconditional fairness and that they benefit to the greatest extent possible from the results of the research. Researchers must also exhaustively pursue justice and beneficence for their participants by minimizing potential harms and taking-on any burdens associated with the study (OFFICE FOR PROTECTION FROM RESEARCH RISKS, 1991).
2.4 Researcher awareness of potential harms is instrumental in creating ethicality
In the case of cogenerative dialogue, researchers can only realize participant beneficence by having a profound understanding of authenticity criteria (GUBA & LINCOLN, 1989) and its relation to stakeholder fairness. During the practice of cogenerative dialogue, researchers need to be aware of the ethical forewarnings that are inherent in the relational nature of this type of investigation. There also needs to be a further awareness that achieving participant beneficence is an ongoing process that entails different perspectives on ethicality dependent on the perspectives of the researchers, participants, and the larger group being impacted by the study. The attainment of communality and a unification of varying perspectives on ethicality, unity, and stakeholder beneficence should emerge paramount in cogenerative dialogues yet this can only happen if researchers fully acknowledge the caveats and potential pitfalls of the practice.
3. Introducing Cosmopolitanism as an Ethical Best Practice
Educational research has highlighted how ways of knowing vary by socio- economic, racial and cultural backgrounds. In instances like cogenerative dialogue, where these multiple ways of knowing come into intimate contact with each other, the goal of co-generating a plan of action for the betterment of a classroom is met with different reactions by students and teachers. Students, for example, are often ambivalent when confronted with the proposal to engage in such inclusive, mutually shared acts that impact the classroom. At times, students are rightly cautious about the authoritative power of a "co-generated plan" and may sense that they are being co-opted to support the teacher in his/her rule over the class. Furthermore, the act of co-generating a plan that impacts wide spread practice means a shift in students beliefs, thoughts, and actions. We are implying that a student's transition from a lived world that has been created and reinforced by experiences with home, school, and community that limit student agency and stifles their voice will be seamless. In actuality, such a transition is multilayered and complex. For the teacher, engaging in cogenerative dialogues means a transition from the comfort of reproducing already existent practice. It also means a removal of oneself from the safety of practice that is supported by the institution of school/schooling. As a result of the emergent need for ontological shifts, research participants may experience feelings of trepidation and anxiety. When cogenerative dialogues are enacted that do not authenticate these experiences, they can lead to research practices that are unethical because they ignore these vital socio-emotional elements and thereby stress participant harms instead of benefits.
3.1 Expanded student roles can be troublesome without expanded student communities
Ethical cogenerative dialogues therefore necessitate an awareness of the existence of not only the socio-emotional divides among participants but also the socio-economic, racial, gender and cultural differences. In order to circumnavigate the misalignment that emerges as a result of the forced interaction of varying social perspectives (socio-emotional, socio-economic, socio-cultural), the creation of a unifying agent that recognizes all manners of difference yet tran- scends the existent boundaries is necessary. The philosophical approach of cosmopolitanism can act as a catalytic force to navigate these differences while simultaneously rooting practice in a democratic ideal that stresses stakeholder beneficence.
3.2 Creating cosmopolitan practices in cogenerative dialogue
Cosmopolitanism is founded on the concept that all of humanity is a member of a single community that is bound by shared morals and ideals. This notion concurrently supports a move away from nationality and one towards the collective responsibility obligation for people who traditionally would be perceived as foreign or unfamiliar (APPIAH, 2006). In cosmopolitan practice, the bonds of family, friendship and camaraderie are extended to all (BHABA, 1996). Tailoring this notion to cogenerative dialogues entails of a process through which the porous boundaries of fields are flooded with communal practice. We theorize the enactment of communal practice in multiple fields within a particular structure as an attainment of cosmopolitanism. In order to achieve this goal, there needs to be an ongoing and continually enacted praxis that aims to neutralize the impact of interactions that magnify the ethical inequalities that emerge as a result of the enactment of social life. These inequalities are attributed to teachers and students and are based on factors such as race, class and ethnicity. By applying the cosmopolitan ideal in all interactions with participants in a study, we embody the belief that the research privileges no particular way of knowing or being. The student also develops a taste for cultures that vary from her/his own and an acceptance for matters that arise that are foreign to his/her localized ways of knowing. This practice therefore embraces a philosophy that ensures collective benefits and harms for all participants. The move to establish a cogenerative dialogue research group within the classroom while other participants are engaged in other activities that benefit the learning community at large thereby becomes a practice for the benefit of all. The enactment of this philosophy thereby transcends the conventional dual nature of differences between the classroom and cogenerative dialogue fields that emerge in the enactment of traditional cogenerative dialogues.
4. Maximizing Participant Beneficence
To address ethical practice in cogenerative dialogues, researchers need to deeply consider what participant beneficence means in their study. The notion of beneficence in educational research inherently requires a researcher being/doing good and causing as little harm as possible to participants in the study. This notion is often remiss in addressing the issue of beneficence as enacted among research participants. As we explore ethics in cogenerative dialogues, we approach the issue of beneficence as an ideal that must be worked toward by not only researchers but all that have a vested interest in the study. In order words, the process of attaining beneficence must be enacted by multiple participants across fields.
4.1 The constant pursuit of ethical practice
Adhering to the ethos of cosmopolitanism, we have established the need for all stakeholders' perspectives to be acknowledged and addressed without privileging any one set of voices. We have also developed the need to develop communal practice in multiple fields. Carrying out this plan requires researchers who are not only mindful enough to utilize participant perspectives in their work but are willing to undergo a process where immediacy in engaging in collective ethical practice is commonplace and where actors (students, teachers, researchers) become an embodiment of ethical practice. In Francisco VARELA's work, a guiding point for the attainment of beneficence thereby consists of the realization that "no moral principle is realizable in itself, since the analytic process makes it progressively clearer that we are doomed to be never satisfied with any sets of hopes and expectations, however rational they appear to be" (1999, p.64). With the awareness that no research practices can be absolutely ethical and devoid of harms, we focus on the collective quest for attainment of living authenticity criteria.
4.2 Striving to attain living authenticity criteria
Our ethical goal in using cogenerative dialogues should be a quest to root prac- tice in fairness while bringing a union between classroom practices and onto- logical, educative, catalytic, and tactile authenticity to stakeholders. The question of what is ethical in cogenerative dialogue research therefore needs to be also considered in light of student variables such as their ego, self identity, and per- sonality. These nuances often go unchecked in cogenerative dialogues and vary from the macro collective social differences (socio-emotional, socio-economic dif- ference) that we and other researchers have discussed in our work.
4.3 Addressing insularity through communality
Not addressing these issues in our work insinuates that we either do not value them or that we do not consider them as having an effect on the cogenerative dialogue and classroom fields. What happens when we do not address these issues is that they become manifested over the course of the enactment of social life within and outside of the cogenerative dialogue fields. This is likely to occur often when students come from families outside the school that do not give them the social and emotional support that they need to be empowered socially, aca- demically or otherwise. The solidarity and comfort developed within the cogenerative dialogue then becomes an integral part of the students' lived world and sharing the results by allowing other people to access the structures become problematic. To these types of students, the issue of sharing what has evolved is difficult because the practice has become a personal resource. The cogenerative dialogue can develop to be a part of a students' family that he/she is not willing to share with the rest of the classroom or the rest of the world. Sharing the practice can trigger emotional fall-out if the student has previously been emotionally sheltered or psychologically nurtured by the cogenerative dialogue field. Furthermore, when there is an entry of new participants into the cogenerative dialogue or when the insular nature of the cogenerative dialogue becomes threatened, levels of tension that are directly related to ego, identity and personality oftentimes become evident and are difficult to address because they have already spiraled out of control.
4.4 Student enactments of cosmopolitan practices
Prior to the establishment of the need to create a school community or generating cogenerative dialogues as a means to ultimately bettering participants across multiple fields, students in New York High School were not necessarily interested in allowing new members to join the cogenerative dialogue group. They exhibited multiple instances of asynchronous actions (COLLINS, 2004) with students who were not entrenched in the cogenerative dialogue ideal, and privileged themselves when referring to the entire class group by making statements like "they really need to get it together" or "that's why we can't learn nothing because the rest of the class ain't focused like we are." The insularity of the cogenerative dialogue field combined with the display of identity and ego affiliated with cogenerative dialogue participants raised issues of ethics that surround student interactions between classroom and cogenerative dialogue fields. The enactment of a consistent move towards cosmopolitan action aids in the development of the students' ability to embrace the cogenerative dialogue field, the classroom field, and the school field concurrently. This also alleviates the tension that arises when personal issues/differences among students that are based more on personality than culture become apparent.
In an instance in Liberty High School, Anthony, a member of the cogenerative dialogue group, developed a strategy for keeping all members of the classroom field on task by tapping students on the shoulder when they exhibited behaviors that appeared to be distracting.
Anthony: I think ... I need to be more focused ... ya know, I need more focus. Ed Lehner: Is there anything we can do as a class to help that?
Anthony: Well, um, when one of the students is not like as focused as the rest of the classmates, like/should like, we should pull him to the side. And we should tell him, like, "you have to get this, you know, like finished, everyone else is done."
Ed Lehner: Okay. So you mean someone who is not focused. You want someone to pull him to the side?
Anthony: Like –
Ed Lehner (Motioning to Anthony) Go ahead ...
Anthony: I am saying like, say I am talking and all you all is like doin your work, and I am in my own world, and it is like time for the Regents and we have to start prep, it is prep time, you all could be like this (tapping Keon on the shoulder). And say "come on son, it is time to do your work." (Motioning with his hands)
Ed Lehner: Okay, so kind of a way to get him focused.
Anthony: Yeah, without disturbing the other students. Ya-all can get be back on track and ready for the test.
4.5 Creating the cosmopolitan "we" in cogenerative dialogue
In this vignette, we see the seamless transition between the viewing the self as "I," "We," and one with Anthony using himself as a representative for the larger classroom group. When Anthony enacts this distributed management practice in the classroom, we see the multiple layers he has to navigate in order to enact this cosmopolitan practice (communalism across fields) of being obligated to ensure that a fellow classmate (Keon) was paying attention. He rolls his eyes and shakes his head in response to his classmates' action and thereby establishes that he disapproves of his colleague's actions. Without the presence of a cosmopolitan obligation to his classmate and to the class, the interaction may have stopped there and resulted in the display of asynchrony and negative emotional energy between the two classmates. However, Anthony manages to put his personal feelings aside and ensure that both he and his classmate are paying attention. This notion of distributed classroom management occurred as a result of Anthony's desire to not only develop as a student or to be able to access the teacher for his benefit but to enact success for the entire class on an upcoming standardized exam. His use of the word "we" as he articulates his plan to get students to pay attention in class speaks to that fact. When he later enacts distributed classroom management practice, the emergence of his personal beliefs becomes evident as he expresses a level of disdain for his classmates action when he rolls his eyes and shakes his head in response to his action. Despite this reaction, he was able to put his disapproval of his classmate aside and enact the practice of tapping him to get his attention and ensuring that they both continue with the lesson. This instance speaks to the ability of the students to attain "a taste" for other people’s ways of knowing, being and interacting while maintaining the larger more cosmopolitan goal of success on the upcoming exam for all students. The question that arises is how actors in the cogenerative dialogue and classroom fields become an embodiment of ethical practice when ethical practice contains multiple definitions for different individuals? Furthermore, how does an attainment of ethical practice become actualized in interplay with issues that arise in LINCOLON and GUBA’s fourth generation evaluation criteria such as prolonged engagement and tactile assessment?
An approach that holds all of the afore mentioned considerations in high regard leads to an investigation of the ethical dimensions of cogenerative dialogues that includes the multiple perspectives of participants engaged in the various fields involved in the practice. In cogenerative dialogues, all the spaces of the school, both physical and symbolic, are influenced because stakeholders interact in these diverse fields. Since only some students are engaged in cogenerative dialogues but all students are engaged in the class, we need to study the interactions between participants and non-participants more closely. We also need to analyze how they view each other and the consistently changing classroom field. Students who are only in the classroom are not always privy to what is generated in cogenerative dialogue in spite of the fact that they are inevitably affected by its repercussions. This leads us to an investigation into a critical ethical dimension where questions are closely tied to the issue of beneficence. Also, such practices can be viewed as privileging the cogenerative dialogue group while maximizing, or at least not considering, participant harms for the classroom group (ANDERSON, 1998; PRESIDENT'S COMMISSION, 1982). This definition forces us to look at cogenerative dialogues more critically and ask the following questions about its practices: While the classroom teacher and the participants in cogenerative dialogues have built a plan of action to change the classroom, how are the other participants in the classroom field affected by the changes? Does the collective personality of the cogenerative dialogue group infringe on the pre- established norms in the classroom? Does the cogenerative dialogue create a hierarchy within the classroom where participants are at the pinnacle of the hierarchy and non-participants are relegated to being placed lower on a socio- emotional totem pole? And most importantly, how are student whose voices have been privileged by engaging in cogenerative dialogues interact with students who are non-participants?
5. The Potential Pitfalls of Authenticity Criteria
As researchers concerned with being ethical in our interactions with all students, we consistently utilize various means to attain ethical practice. Utilizing established criteria that appear to have been successful for other researchers appears to be a wise approach to engaging in ethical practice. However, as time progresses and we become more entrenched in the research, the roles that generalized notions play in the research act become less valuable. To engage in truly ethical work, conventional methods do not have to be ignored but they need to be critiqued and tailored to meet the specific needs of different populations. There is also a need to explore the limitations of conventional ethnographic tools of analysis in measuring ethicality.
5.1 The problem of prolonged engagement
In research practices, GUBA and LINCOLN's (1989) notion of prolonged engagement involves researchers developing convivial relationships with actors within a research project with the goal of establishing and building rapport that transcends the traditional differences usually associated with researchers and participants. The prolonged engagement afforded by cogenerative dialogues usually greatly benefits research participants. However the lengthening of engagement needs to be closely monitored by researchers in order to maximize participant beneficence. In our experience, researchers need to uncover nuances in the nature of the research that interfere with a seamless enactment of ethical practice that should occur as a result of prolonged engagement. The theoretical framework usually subscribed to in cogenerative dialogues acknowledges the influence of multiple fields on each other as a fundamental component of research. Of the multiple fields where the researcher interacts with the students, the most consistent interactions occur within cogenerative dialogue and the classroom. A close look at how the roles of researcher and participants play out over time in both of these fields demonstrates that the progression of time is directly linked to the building of communal practice within cogenerative dialogues. Students and teachers who have established policies that truly embody the cogenerative dialogue creed of no voice being privileged may be more likely to speak openly about a wide array of issues with each other. Usually these participants eat together, co-generate plans of action for the classroom, and in many instances become a pseudo-family. As the actors within this field spend more time together, the intimate connections between participants are so tightly bound that when they move into the classroom field (where they interact with other stakeholders), they maintain their allegiances to their cogenerative dialogue team and therefore create a division between cogenerative dialogue participants and non-participants. The ethical issues that arise from this division are fasci- nating because of the fact that the teacher/researcher spends a large amount of time with both participants in the classroom and the cogenerative dialogue. The cogenerative dialogue group receives the benefit of prolonged engagement whereas the classroom group has less access to the teacher. The researcher facilitates relationships that develop trust and collective responsibility in the cogenerative dialogue group and does not engage in similar relationships with other stakeholders. This easily could transform into a preferential treatment of the cogenerative dialogue participants in the classroom field. The goal of prolonged engagement is therefore only a benefit when there are specific shared experiences between all stakeholders regardless of the primary field of interaction with the researcher or each other. At the essence of the discussion of ethics as it is played out between cogenerative dialogue participants and other participants in the research study, is therefore an analysis of beneficence as it relates to all stakeholders involved in prolonged engagement.
5.2 When communality morphs into gang behavior
Both of you should have a word with Cameron because he is not going to listen to anyone else in the school except you two. Research Group! What does the research team do anyway? Because to me, you all look like a gang!
One day, about three months into our research at Liberty High School, Mrs. Smith, the school safety officer, inadvertently warned us of the potential ethical issues that cogenerative dialogues had brought to our school. The sense of security and belonging that a gang provides had become afforded by our practice and when we (the cogenerative dialogue group) interacted with people in other fields, we were perceived as a gang. In further analysis of our interactions with other students and staff, we looked to pinpoint how and when these issues emerged. When we first starting cogenerative dialogues, classroom practices had changed so dramatically that we were temporarily blind to the ancillary effects they were having on a few students. As teachers/researchers who were directly affected by our research practice, we became so entrenched in a cyclic and insular pattern of teaching, learning, and transforming our practice that we did not see that the process of our building solidarity with students often exclusively privileged our teacher/researcher roles over other school staff. Relationships had evolved and developed with such a genuine sense of respect and camaraderie that teachers momentarily lost sight of the students' larger need to transport newly learned skills into other fields with adults. When witnessing this exclusivity, which was brought on by prolonged engagement, we had to grapple with the need to nuance fourth generation evaluation processes into our practice.
5.3 Addressing the unethicality of exclusivity through cosmopolitanism
Although there were many positive results from the practice of cogenerative dialogues, we needed to venture to the next level of communality in order to ensure the beneficence of not only one group of students but of other students and staff. Our enactment of an insular self sustaining and self benefiting research practice provides an instance of "group nationalism" in which the cogenerative dialogue field becomes a metaphorical nation that considers itself as self sustaining and separate from interactions with other nations/fields. This serves as a contrast to the cosmopolitan ideals that guide our notion of beneficence for all participants in a study. If we perceive multiple locations where actors in social life interact with each other as separate fields, we acknowledge that the fields take on unique, self defined roles. The porous boundaries of the fields therefore can become clogged with the confluence of an emerging group dynamic and the fact that all participants within the specific field are attaining immediate results. When the participants within the cogenerative dialogue field come into contact with other people who have a vested interest in their own well being, issues of ethics abound. A division between the cogenerative dialogue group and the rest of the school develops and the ideology of a community that is responsible for and obligated to the agency of all participants becomes destroyed. This practice also develops into a sheltering of the cogenerative dialogue participants from the realities that exist beyond the walls of their field. The reality of the dynamics that guide social life require that even if we do not cultivate a cosmopolitan ideal within cogenerative dialogues, we are still forced to interact within a shared cosmos. The lack of a cosmopolitan ideal therefore leads to an instance where the initial benefits for participants that were generated by cogenerative dialogues exponentially decrease as they are replaced by harms such as alienation, inability to adjust to the larger group and development of reciprocal contemptuous feelings between the cogenerative dialogue participants and larger classroom participants. We must therefore cultivate a strong cosmopolitan ideal among all participants affected by cogenerative dialogues while maintaining a recursive relationship between the cosmopolitan ideal and issues related to the harms and benefits of a particular research study.
6. Analyzing the Benefits and Harms of Cogenerative Dialogue
Although STITH and ROTH rightly claim that cogenerative dialogues are intended to be used to "produce locally relevant understandings and recommendations for future actions" (2006, ¶18), an awareness that local relevance varies among local fields is necessary for the practice of ethical research practice. A plan can be co- generated within a cogenerative dialogue that encompasses local understandings that are unique and beneficial only to the cogenerative dialogue participants. In such an instance, the fact that the researcher is involved in prolonged engagement with a certain group of students functions as a detriment to an entire classroom or school as the needs of only a small number of participants is being met.
6.1 The problem of prolonged engagement
In an attempt to lay out a comparison between harms and benefits of engaging in the research act, laying out the ratio of harms to benefits seems like an effective way to make comparisons. In mathematics, the ratio is seen as a linear relationship between two quantities. While the ratio of one quantity to another equals to an even distribution when they are of the same numerical value, in the case of cogenerative dialogues, an equal distribution of quantities of harms to benefits presupposes that the values of each harm and benefit are equal. When engaging in the cogenerative dialogue, we function with the assumption that this is not the case because of the general aim of the particular research act (to benefit the entire classroom field). However, as explained earlier, the goal of attaining truly ethical research, on an even playing field (the classroom), leaves the cogenerative dialogue team better equipped for success than the team that represents the classroom field. The ethical dilemma is therefore ensuring that the benefits not only far outweigh the harms, but that the long-term effects of the harms exponentially decrease while the effects of the benefits exponentially increase. In interactions with inner city students who have developed the ability to hone survival skills and create mechanisms that ensure the preservation of self, the process of creating this even playing field where the team that represents the cogenerative dialogue team is just as equipped for success as the rest of the classroom is what is needed in order to truly actualize ethical practice. An often understated psycho-social dimension that impacts the tactical authenticity of the research act influences the role that self-preservation, ego and personality play in the distribution of benefits among all participants. According to LINCOLN and GUBA tactical authenticity occurs when "all stakeholders and others at risk are provided with the opportunity to provide inputs" (1989, p.250). We would expand this notion to include all stakeholders feeling obligated to ensure that they are all accessing all available resources and are all meeting a collective goal. The interplay between the cogenerative dialogue squad and the classroom participants involve the cogenerative dialogue participants' feelings of accomplishment, responsibility, camaraderie and a desire to maintain the positive emotional energy generated in the cogenerative dialogue pitted against possible feelings of exclusion, jealousy, and inadequacy of the larger class group. This interplay certainly impacts the display of tactical authenticity in the research act. If the interplay between the students is being observed from the perspective of the non-participants in cogenerative dialogues, tactical authenticity is almost non existent. Full empowerment to act becomes truncated by the emotional climate of the classroom and can only become actualized through the enactment of an approach to a larger democratic ideal.
6.2 Cogenerative dialogue as a seedbed for cosmopolitanism
In order to attain this cosmopolitan ideal, Inner city youth dispositions to take pride and ownership of their lived worlds should be utilized as a tool to transform the cogenerative dialogue into an arena where all participants then belong to a single community that can be cultivated. A student at New York High School discusses the intimate relationship that she has with her neighborhood and describes this relationship in the following sentence: "I live in 'Development City', that's my hood, we ride or die out there. My block, my building, the whole Development."
In interactions with inner-city students, it is phenomenal to look at the allegiances that students pledge to their buildings, blocks and neighborhoods and the way that these relationships guide their interactions with each other. The shift from block to building to neighborhood to region and the way that these shifts seamlessly occur when an individual or group identity is challenged speaks to the existence of an already established cosmopolitan way of being in student culture that greatly impacts our perceptions of what is ethical research practice in cogenerative dialogues. There is an apparent division between the culture generated within one building and another building even if they are in the same housing development. However, if issues arise that create tension between that housing development and another one, there is a joining of forces; a natural obligation that the two buildings have for each other that surpasses the fact that they are two isolated self sustaining entities. Concurrently, if there is an argument about boroughs within New York City, students immediately form alliances among varying buildings, neighborhoods and blocks in order to support their borough, state, or even coast.
6.3 Addressing the unethicality of exclusivity through cosmopolitanism
In essence, we believe that the framework for the attainment of truly ethical cogenerative dialogue practice involves a critical look at existent practice and a constant push towards the larger goal of beneficence that encompass all participants. The degree to which ethical participant research is realized is inextricably interlocked into stakeholders' abilities to look beyond the insularity of the cogenerative dialogue and embrace a larger vision of community. When members participate in cogenerative dialogue, they must collectively resist the in- clination to build solidarity that benefits only a few and remain compelled to unite under a cosmopolitan vision.
( Christopher Emdin )
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