Co-creating with teachers during participatory action research. Teachers’ perceptions, researchers’ dilemmas, and some possible strategies to enhance communication in the field

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 posthoc 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.