Cogenerative dialogues, emotional conflicts and polyvagal theory: links to science learning

Abstract

This forum paper offers alternative insights into Pei-Ling Hsu’s “It’s a magic circle”! Using cogenerative dialogues to create a safe environment to address emotional conflicts in a project-based learning science internship. In her paper, she presented how cogenerative dialogues can be used to create an emotionally safe environment for conflict resolutions in a project-based science internship program. She examined the emotions during the cogenerative dialogues using the polyvagal theory. Here, we continue the discussion by raising alternative perspectives to view the events, particularly the “Lucy incident” that was described. We suggest the use of emotional regulation strategies such as situation selection, situation modification, attention deployment, cognitive change and response modulation as a means to enhance the way cogenerative dialogues could be carried out. The main argument on this commentary is that strong emotions cannot be dismissed if cogenerative dialogues are used as a means to resolve conflicts. Rather, participants in cogenerative dialogues need to apply specific emotional regulation strategies so that they can contribute and participate in cogenerative dialogues more constructively.