Abstract

This interactive workshop will analyse the challenges and opportunities of working collaboratively with
‘students as co-producers’. The presenters’ draw on their experience of extensive collaboration with
students on different projects in the School of Health and Social Care, to introduce a theoretical model that
explores co-production. In particular, the model seeks to facilitate reflection, discussion and understanding
about who ‘drives’, or controls, the co-production of knowledge in such partnerships, given the apparent
differences in power and status between students and academics. Inherent within this analysis is an
examination of the nature of key relationships within co-production including reference to ‘apprenticeship’
and ‘partnership’ models of knowledge production.
A fifteen minute presentation will introduce key concepts relating to co-production and will present a
theoretical model for analysis. Participants will be given approximately thirty minutes to discuss and test the
model and to relate it their own experiences and plans for working with students as producers. It is
envisaged that this collaborative, interactive approach will produce further knowledge and insights leading
to refinement of the model. A fifteen minute plenary and conclusion will assist participants to reflect further
on the challenges and opportunities of co-production.
From this workshop participants will gain an enhanced understanding of working with students’ as co-producers
of knowledge and will analyse some of the core issues that impact on co-production. Additionally,
they will be introduced to an evolving theoretical model which explores some of the contradictions inherent
within co-production and invited to contribute to the debate.