Co-creation and Partnership for Inclusive Learning

Context 

Co-creation and partnership play a central role in inclusive education. Engaging students as partners, rather than passive recipients, helps build ownership, strengthen belonging, and create learning environments where student perspectives genuinely shape educational experiences. Co-creation enriches learning by drawing on students’ diverse identities, backgrounds and insights, helping to foster more culturally responsive pedagogies and inclusive academic spaces. 

At Cardiff, partnership is understood and implemented as a purposeful, enhancement-focused process in which staff and students work together, placing equal value on the distinct insights each brings. It emphasises transparency, shared decision-making, and involving students not only as contributors but as co-designers of learning practices and experiences. 

For more information, see Cardiff’s Education Development Toolkit. 

Implementation 

Co-creation is participatory and reflective, evolving organically through dialogue and shared inquiry. Practical strategies for embedding co-creation could involve: 

• Collaborative teaching approaches that invite students to contribute their perspectives, enriching academic discussions. 
• Culturally responsive strategies that recognise and value students’ varied experiences and identities. 
• Intentional communication, making clear that students are partners whose contributions influence real change. 

An important inclusivity consideration is that co-creation must avoid unintentionally privileging already-confident or well-connected students. Without thoughtful design, partnership activity risks becoming accessible only to a small group of “super-engaged” students. Intentional planning is needed to widen participation and ensure all students, particularly those facing hidden or structural barriers, have opportunities to contribute. 

Spotlight from Practice

Across the University, staff are adopting a range of partnership approaches, from co-designing learning activities to involving students in problem framing, reviewing assessment practices, and shaping programme-level enhancements. 

On Wednesday 17 June 2026, Heather Pennington and Dr Alyson Lewis, co-leads of the Associate Fellowship Programme, worked with Dr Michael Willett and Dr Laura Barritt, Fellowship leads, to facilitate their annual co-creation event. Over the past three years, these events have brought together Fellowship participants, mentors, previous cohorts and alumni to identify educational challenges and collaboratively develop practical responses. 

This year’s event responded directly to feedback from Fellowship participant forums, where colleagues identified a need for greater support in managing challenging behaviours and difficult situations in educational contexts. Rather than developing resources centrally, the Fellowship community was invited to work together to explore the issue, share experiences and co-create resources for future use. 

The event demonstrated how professional learning can be shaped by authentic practitioner needs and the expertise that exists across a professional community. Participants were not simply asked to comment on pre-existing materials; through dialogue, reflection and shared inquiry, they actively contributed to shaping resources that will inform future iterations of the Fellowship Programme. The process therefore generated not only practical outputs, but also strengthened relationships and collective learning across the Fellowship community. 

For more information, see Cardiff’s Education Development Toolkit. 

Impact

Where co-creation is embedded in practice, colleagues observe more responsive and inclusive learning environments with increased student ownership and richer dialogue. Engaging students in decision-making provides valuable insight into learners’ experiences and the barriers they encounter, enabling changes that are more equitable and better aligned with learner needs. 

Reflections / what’s next? 

As educators, we can develop our partnership practices by asking: 

• Whose voices are shaping my module, and who is missing from the conversation? 
• Where could students be more involved in shaping learning design, assessment, or feedback processes? 
• How am I signalling that students’ contributions are not only welcome but influential? 

Effective co-creation is transparent, inclusive, and grounded in mutual respect. 

A ‘Starter for ten’ 

As a prompt, to get ideas flowing, here are a few questions to help you reflect on this aspect of inclusive education within your own context: 

• How might you create a small co-design activity in your next module? 
• Which students might be unintentionally excluded from partnership opportunities? 
• What is one decision you could make with students, rather than for them?