Dialogic scientific gatherings with mothers and teachers from a primary school: raising awareness about the impact of gender and education research

Abstract

Social science unveils new ways of engaging communities in science. However, it has not yet been analysed how dialogic scientific gatherings (DSGs), a community science action, involve communities to benefit from the research on two sustainable development goals: quality education and gender equality. Within the framework of the EU H2020-funded project “ALLINTERACT Widening and diversifying citizen engagement in science” (Flecha and ALLINTERACT Consortium, 2020), the DSGs on evidence in preventing violence and gender violence through education have been replicated to engage a group of 10 mothers from a low-middle socioeconomic background whose children attend the same neighbourhood school and two teachers. The participants’ perception of the DSGs’ replicability has been studied through focus groups. The first one was a pretest FG aimed at collecting the previous perceptions of the participants about their awareness of the scientific research benefits and impact and their previous engagement in science. The second round was a posttest FG after participating in the DSGs, which consisted of 11 sessions in which participants selected scientific articles to read and discuss together. The posttest FG explores changes in participants’ perception regarding the topics discussed in the first round and analyses how the replicability of the DSGs aimed at community participation in science developed. The main findings show that after participating in the DSGs, participants reported more awareness related to scientific research benefits and impact, increased involvement in science, greater understanding of the social impact of scientific evidence in preventing violence and gender violence through education, and more engagement in social issues for the improvement of their community. The implications for the replicability of DSGs as community science action are as follows: 1) The topics to be read must be based on the participants’ interests, and 2) the dialogical functioning criteria must be ensured.