Show Tell and Talk: Co-created curricula in practice: Ideas, challenges and opportunities

This panel brings together four short papers (7-8 minutes) that critically reflect on different aspects of co-creation. Together, they ask a series of questions and raise challenges for the conception of co-creation and its practice. They also, however, consider how to constructively address these challenges, and point to opportunities. Following short presentations, there will be a discussion and Q&A where these are further explored.

• The first paper (Culley and Martineau), titled ‘A community-oriented relational approach to teaching in HE’, addresses the current challenges faced by Universities to adequately support the growing mental health and wellbeing (MHWB) needs of their students in relation to the question of co-creation. supporting students’ positive MHWB, and that a more community-based, relational approach which focuses on fostering students’ sense of belonging and prioritizes engagement and active learning is better able to empower students and thus to support their positive mental health and wellbeing.
• The second paper (Sealy), titled ‘Co-creation and epistemological pluralism or closure’, asks questions of the extent to which co-creation on a unit can lead to a more diverse or narrower set of views and positions being engaged, and the epistemological terms of this engagement, and the effects this can have on students’ appreciation of a topic and the development of their own positions. It does so through reflection of teaching a 3rd year UG unit on religion and politics.
• The third paper (Lin), titled ‘Co-creating Learning from a Decolonial Perspective: Blurring Informal and Formal Learning to Enhance student-teacher Relationships and Empower Students’, assesses the extent to which the persisting binary between formal and informal learning has obscured the student-teacher relationships against the backdrop of internationalised and decolonising education that is competition-driven and market-targeting, and colonial. From a decolonial perspective, the paper explores culturally responsive ‘coffee morning’ and ‘sharing home-cooked food in the classroom’ as two binary-blurring case studies facilitating students and teachers to collaborate, decolonise, and empower students.
• The final paper (Dodsworth), titled ‘Student Attitudes to Co-Creation’ explores the evidence for student support for co-creation, exploring both to what extent students seek to participate in co-creation and with what forms. Contextualising co-creation within a broader crisis of student engagement, this paper will argue that a more nuanced and reflexive approach is needed to ensure that students are able to fully participate, and so equally benefit, from the possibilities of co-creation.

An audience Q&A and discussion between the panelists then explores the challenges and considerations in relation to co-creation with a particular view to how these might be addressed and the opportunities that might be opened up.

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• Facilitator – Thomas Sealy – Lecturer in Ethnicity and Race, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
• Contributors:
  • Tia Culley
  • Wendy Martineau
  • Joe Lin
  • Ashley Dodsworth