Building Individual Confidence, Responsive Practices, and Community for Wellbeing

Insights from a Review of Reflective Writing about Co-creation

Abstract

Students and staff are experiencing heightened stress and uncertainty prompted by climate change, racism and social injustices, the COVID-19 pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, and concerns about job prospects and income. While co-creation practices cannot solve such problems, they can foster wellbeing as students and staff wrestle with the realities these problems create. Drawing from a review of 245 reflective essays published between 2010 and 2023 in Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education (TLTHE), a journal devoted to showcasing student-staff partnership work, we focus on three themes that illuminate how co-creation work can support wellbeing during these difficult times. Co-creation can: (1) build and boost confidence for individuals; (2) nurture the development of culturally responsive curriculum, identity, diversity, and inclusivity; and (3) contribute to community building. We substantiate each of these themes with excerpts from TLTHE essays, and we affirm the importance of recommitting to co-creation to nurture wellbeing through meaningful and reciprocally affirming relationships among students and staff.