The benefits of student participation in educational design has long been established. Furthermore, in both education and civic particiaption the importance of critical agency has been shown to be highly beneficial for participation and attainment. Minorities and marginalized youth seem to benefit from developing critical consciousness (Diemer et al., 2015). This research aims to highlight the opportunities and challenges of co-production in the Finnish secondary educational system and sets out to illustrate how, when utilized effectively, co-production can be effective in improving both the design and delivery of educational programs which invariably shape educational climate. This research seeks to further expand the analysis of co-production by going deeper, by framing the argument in terms of what traditionally marginalized groups in educational organisations (students) can contribute in designing and delivering educational experiences and achieving social justice as localized, grassroots constituents of educational organisations. 

As a normative concept social justice is fairly recent, stemming back to the middle of the 19th century, however as a sociological practice, its roots are ancient, with evidence of what we now call social justice stemming back millennia. In recent years the term has become weaponised, taking on new political meanings and contestations. This research refers to social justice in a normative sense, that being the Rawlsian conception of rights and opportunities for individuals, regardless of their race, gender, religion, class of origin, natural talents and reasonable conception of a good life.

Previous studies have shown that Finnish lower-secondary school students are not very active in civic participation nor school democracy (Schulz et al., 2018.)” Thus, more effective social justice education  would be needed, entailing analysis of systems of power and oppression and aiming to promote social change and student agency. Four tools for this are: factual information, critical analysis, personal reflection and action, and awareness of group dynamics of culturally diverse groups (Hackman 2005). Democratic and inclusive practices are often seen as fundamental. This requires reciprocal relationship between teachers and students fostering their identities and advocating for their active participation (Hackman, 2016; Klaasen, 2020).

The theory of co-production goes beyond participation. While participation allows for some input, when realised to its full capacity, co-production enables people with lived experience to play an equal role in both designing and delivering services (Ostrom 1996; Pestoff 2014; Turnhout et al. 2020; McMullin 2022). The topic of this research surrounds the potential for co-production in lower-secondary education to act as a catalyst to increase social justice in the Finnish educational sector, and furthermore seeks to understand more about student engagement in regulating and negotiating organisational capacity, to which they themselves are deeply contingent upon. The topic of this research thus directly relates to the expansion of democracy to groups in society historically understood as having low productive value in sustaining democracy and democratic principles, namely young people. This is investigated with the following research questions:

RQ1: How do students act as representatives of their own interests to seek empowerment?

RQ2: To what extent do students themselves see their role in shaping and formulating educational climate to achieve social justice?

For this study the research team collected data using semi-structured group-interviews. The participants (N= 55) were diverse students from two different schools in Finland. The age group of the students who participated were between 15-17 years old, from diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. Participants were recruited with an open call for both students and teaching staff. The research team visited the schools’ lower-secondary 8th grade and upper-secondary 2nd grade classes and presented the study and its purpose to investigate students’ perceptions on their sense of belonging and engagement at school. Especially students who speak other languages than the language of schooling were invited to participate in the study. One of the teachers offered her English classes to be the sites of the research interviews. All the students and their guardians were informed about the study by sending them a letter including the purpose of the study, information on the interviews, the ethical procedures and the possibility either to participate or not in the study. The group-interviews were organised in autumn 2022. In the interviews there were 4 – 6 students and 2 interviewers in each group. The discussions were recorded and then transcribed by one of the researchers. Up to this point, the transcribed data were used for a content-driven thematic analysis, however the subsequent phase will implement a discourse analysis. To code the data, author 2 read the responses to gain an initial understanding of the data and identify sub-categories for coding the data. Author 1 used NVivo software to make initial codes. The suggested categories were then discussed among authors 1 and 2; categories were decided upon. Categories relevant to this research paper that arose from the data were (1) belonging, (2) school climate, (3) social justice; (4) engagement

Our preliminary findings indicate that students offer localised solutions for gender equality, anti-racism and inclusivity. As grassroots inhabitants of educational organisations, students themselves are well positioned to offer sound practical and pedagogical solutions to foster a more holistic and responsive educational environment, tailored towards meeting their needs, as defined by themselves; “bottom-up”. While acknowledging that full co-production is unlikely in educational design and delivery owing to the structural nature of educational context, two important findings from the research are identifiable at this preliminary stage: 1. Some students have a lot to offer in designing and delivering improved educational experiences. 2. Some students do not consider themselves viable agents in discerning solutions for educational improvement, suggesting a wider issue surrounding a democratic deficit in Finnish secondary level education. While this research is grounded in the Finnish context, it may also be relevant to educational systems outside of the Finnish specific context. The data suggests that the students themselves, representative of varied economic positions, identity backgrounds and life experiences, can offer tangible solutions to improving school experience by identifying key areas which could be improved in the school environment, particularly for students experiencing discrimination and inequality - important areas that need to be challenged according to conventional proclamations towards expanding civil and political rights, and achieving social justice.

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