Studenter som aktører i regionale samskapingsprosesser – en ny form for praksis?

Abstract

This chapter examines the students’ role in regional co-creation processes as a new form of internship. The main argument is that students outside the traditional profession-oriented educational programs in health, social work and teacher education training curriculums, such as master-level students in innovation and knowledge development studies, need practical experiences in real-time interactions with regional actors. Practical experiences are in-the-moment practices constructed in dialogues between actors with different interests and knowledge. Within the research, the aim was to design a course where students and regional actors are both participants and co-learners. As co-learners, it is necessary for students to develop process awareness. The research question is: how is process awareness constructed between students and regional actors? A theoretical grounding for building process awareness is to create learning arenas with specific purpose and democratic dialogue in which to develop process awareness. The key findings from our action research dialogues are: i) the uniqueness of real-life challenges experienced in the co-creation processes with regional actors is difficult to replicate in the classroom (on campus); specifically, relational tensions and/or conflicts-of-interest can only be witnessed real-time, ii) the need to make explicit the time dimension of the co-creation process, and iii) the need to make explicit the evolving (unfinished) work in the co-creation process.