Regulating Emotions through Cogenerative Dialogues to Sustain Student Engagement in Science Internships: A Case Study

Open inquiry learning and student–scientist partnerships are two effective ways of enhancing students’ science learning; however, due to their challenging and intimidating nature, students might encounter emotional breakdowns when engaging with them. To address communicative and emotional issues in high school students’ internships with scientists, this ethnographic case study integrated a pedagogical tool called cogenerative dialogues (cogen), which are conversations cogenerated by different stakeholders to reflect on participants’ experiences and help them reach collective decisions about the rules, roles, and responsibilities that govern their partnerships. Data sources include video recordings of internship activities, video recordings of cogenerative dialogues, students’ journals and interviews, and researchers’ field notes, pictures, and artifacts collected during the internship. Drawing on the emotion regulation framework, I demonstrate how cogen could be used as a powerful tool to reveal emotion suppression, share emotion regulation strategies, and transform negative emotions into positive emotions. The results of this case study show that cogen played an important role in addressing specific issues one at a time and sustaining student engagement throughout the internship program. The implications of cogen for sustainability and organizational health are discussed.