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‘Deep participation’ in secondary schools?
‘Participation, Development and Design’
ImaginationLancaster, July 2009
This report has been written to reflect on a small project developed by myself and a team in Lancaster University in collaboration with a secondary school in East Lancashire (UK). The aim of the project was to explore the possibility to work on what Charles Leadbeater (2004) calls ‘deep participation’, meaning involving students to co-design and co-produce their education. With all the limitations of a pilot project, we gained some insights in what supported or inhibited students’ engagement. What stroke us was how students (and the school system) expected school activities to be highly structured, tightly defined by targets and provided by an authoritative figure, and how these expectations were in clear contrast with what we were aiming to: an open and creative process, hoping to engage students in self and joint reflection about their feelings and preferences. Self reflection and open inquiry are key requirements to become ‘an independent learner’ as well as to participate into change processes. Our question is (among others) could design as a subject or an approach to learning-as already Donald Schon has suggested-could be brought into schools to create the basis for more participatory and personalised learning? Is this already happening somewhere?