Towards an ecology of participation: Process philosophy and co-creation of higher education curricula

Abstract

This article brings together the authors’ previous work on co-created curricula (Bovill, 2013a, 2014; Bovill et al., 2011) and on partnership and ethics (Taylor, 2015; Taylor and Robinson, 2014), to develop the concept of co-created curricula as an ecology of participation. In doing so, it deploys Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy to formulate a new way of considering co-creation in the curriculum and co-creation of the curriculum in higher education. Two empirical examples are used to illuminate what such an approach offers. From this, we outline three dimensions of an ecology of participation: a process of becoming which recasts subjectivity; acting well in relation which enacts concern; and an orientation to harmony in which difference in equality is valued. The contribution of the article is twofold: first, the concept of an ecology of participation takes forward current thinking on higher education curricula and partnership ethics; second, its use of process philosophy provides a new lens to consider co-creation in the curriculum and co-creation of the curriculum.