Our research team is currently conducting an ethnographic investigation of a Science, Technology, and Society Living Learning Community (STS-LLC). Our investigation focuses on understanding how engineering students’ macro-ethical reasoning develops within the cultural practices of this community. Our approach to this investigation deliberately partners faculty research leads and a group of undergraduate research fellows (RFs) chosen based on their “insider” status within the STS-LLC cohort being investigated. This collaboration required building substantial infrastructure and routines for disrupting the usual hierarchies that exist between researchers and “participants.” This paper will share multiple perspectives, from both RFs and research leads, on the mutually beneficial relationships that emerged within this research collaboration. We will draw on research team meeting notes, research team meeting recordings, and formative feedback survey responses to support our claims. Research leads will share their perspectives on recruiting, onboarding and working with the RFs and describe some of the macro-ethical considerations that motivated their partnership with RFs. RFs will also describe the multiplicity of ways they have participated in and benefited from this research collaboration. This paper will share sociotechnical innovations that supported the development of effective co-learning and co-working processes. These innovations will be described both in terms of the activities, routines, and artifacts that structured our work and the purposes these activities served. Some innovations were constructed by the research leads in order to: (a) support collaboration and mutual engagement, (b) support engineering students in developing competence with ethnographic methods, (c) expand awareness of the engineering education research literature, (d) empower students to refine their own thinking about macroethics and the purpose of education, (e) recognize particular “knowledge-building” games within research activities, and (f) create space for students’ values and political agendas to shape the direction of the research. We will share some example innovations that were iteratively refined in dialogue with RFs and other example innovations that were developed through the process of coworking with RFs, such as GroupMe communication channels, multi-vocal field noting, and prompts for scaffolding reflections on classroom events. We will describe how the deliberate social and technical organization of this collaboration enabled particular forms of mutually beneficial relationships.
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Building trust, building futures: Knowledge co-production as relationship, design, and process in transdisciplinary science
Understanding and modeling the trajectories of change in broad level interactions in food-energy-water systems is incomplete when it is undertaken by researchers in isolation from those who live and work in the systems. For models and outcomes to have validity they need to be subjected to sustained development and iteration with stakeholders. This requires a paradigm shift in our thinking of stakeholder engagement from viewing such engagement as an isolated activity or part of the data collection methods to thinking of engagement as a process of knowledge generation. That process hinges on building relationships and building trust, and also sustaining these as long-term relationships through multiple elements of research design and execution. Using the case-study of a mid-size river basin we demonstrate a co-production of knowledge process for food-energy-water systems. The findings highlight the multiple and different ways in which knowledge co-production can be transacted in food-energy-water systems while also generating solutions to the use and re-use of water, energy, and nutrients at the landscape level.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1757324
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10424764
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Frontiers in Environmental Science
- Volume:
- 11
- ISSN:
- 2296-665X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2023.1007105
