Humanizing Co-design through attention to educators’ affective and relational experiences

ABSTRACT

Background

Co-design can be challenging and rewarding as educators explore new roles and ideas. Accounts of co-design rarely examine educators’ affective and relational experiences, nor investigate scaffolds for creating humanizing environments. We asked: How did affect and relationship show up in co-design for educators?, How did the affirmation of affect and relationship in the co-design process support the movement of ideas and practices across scales of practice?, How did the movement of ideas and practices facilitate the expansion of the object (to design a compassion course)?

Methods

We analyzed meeting transcripts, field notes, artifacts, interviews, and reflections from a co-design project where educators and researchers developed a course sequence on compassion and dignity in schools.

Findings

Educators discussed affective experiences, including those connected to challenging interactions. Discussing obstacles to compassion contributed to strengthening the co-design community and educators’ positive experience of co-design. Attention to affective experiences supported educators to connect compassion to their lives, invited learning across scales of practice, and expanded their vision for shared work.

Contribution

Attention to affective and relational aspects of co-design strengthens engagement in the co-design process, inviting more equitable participation and creating humanizing design environments, and thus should be a central component of participatory work.

Participatory design research (PDR) brings together theory and method and, as such, is an approach to research that has the potential to create knowledge that attends to multiple ways of knowing and being. Collaborative design, often referred to as co-design, is a participatory design approach to organizing research and learning environments that engages educators as partners in ways that leverage their expertise, lived experiences, and identities, potentially generating more equitable designs for learning (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016). Co-design “relies on teachers’ ongoing involvement with design of educational innovations” and “looks at broad reforms through teachers’ eyes” (Penuel et al., 2007, p. 52). The process can be both challenging and rewarding for educators as they explore new and unfamiliar roles and content (Frumin, 2019; Gomez et al., 2018; Penuel et al., 2007; Potvin, 2020). Co-design environments also can be sites of relationship building as researchers and educators work toward a common goal and along the way share hopes, challenges, dreams, stories, and emotions. In essence, as co-designers work together to develop a product, much more occurs in the process than simply the design of a curriculum or tool (Potvin et al., 2021).

We approach co-design as a potentially humanizing process that involves both self and collective care and development. By humanizing we refer to the recognition of people’s full humanity, as “social, historical, thinking, communicating, transformative, creative persons who participate in and with the world” (Salazar, 2013, p. 126). A humanizing environment fosters a sense of belonging and acknowledges the complexities of what it means to be fully human, including the affective experiences. Camangian and Cariaga (2021) assert that “approaching education as a process of humanization is a reciprocal, mutually anti-oppressive process of self and collective care and development in the context of social transformation” (p. 6). As a form of research, co-design can realize Paris and Winn’s (2013) call to be “mindful of how critically important it is to respect the humanity of the people who invite us into their worlds and help us answer questions about educational, social, and cultural justice” (p. xv). We consider how this call applies to the need to respect the humanity of the people who join us in the process of designing innovations together. This includes developing “reciprocal relationships of dignity and care” (Paris, 2011, p. 140) and creating space for the full human experience to be expressed and valued, including the affective dimensions of co-designers’ experiences.

While co-design holds much potential to be humanizing, it is not inherently humanizing, and facilitators must intentionally plan for creating an environment and process characterized by dignity and care. For co-design to be a place of reciprocal relationships of dignity and care, co-design must be a context where participants can share their affective experiences, where these experiences are seen as worthy and relevant to the task at hand, and where these experiences are met with curiosity and care within the group. Even in co-design, where there is often an intention to share power and show respect across lines of difference, there is the risk of paternalism if there is not explicit attention to supporting “equitable forms of dialogue and listening” (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016, p. 182). Thus, it is critical to develop knowledge of how and when co-design does function as a humanizing environment, as well as how such an environment can potentially support and expand educators’ learning and participation.

We are interested in the ways in which attending to and affirming affect and relationships within co-design might potentially lead to more dignity-affirming and compassionate learning environments for educators, what we refer to as humanizing co-design spaces. Few studies have focused on what happens within the spaces of co-design as relationships are forged and humanity is shared, or about how an environment develops where relationships of care and self-reflection emerge. In this study, we attend to the “lived dimensions of learning and being that are … essential to lasting, transformative change” (Ehret & Hollett, 2016, p. 251) within participatory design, which have been overlooked in the learning sciences. Co-design environments, regardless of the focus of design, can and must be humanizing spaces for participants in co-design. We contend that attention to affect and relationships is an important direction for the study and design of learning and can be a tool by which to make diverse contributions to co-design more visible, supporting orientations toward equity in co-design.

The focal co-design project for the study was organized around creating a digital four-course sequence to support educators in developing greater capacities for compassion and for recognizing the dignity of self and others, to bring this knowledge and skill into their schools as leaders, and to contribute to educators’ capacities to imagine and create more just and compassionate schools. The co-design project shared many features of co-design in the learning sciences, in that it was a facilitated process, there was room for participants’ agency throughout the process, and the aim was a concrete innovation to be developed with key stakeholders (Penuel et al., 2007; Severance et al., 2016). One distinctive aspect of the focal co-design project was that the object of co-design, a course sequence on compassion and dignity for educators, made affect and relationships salient foci for participants, and as such provided a window into experiences we contend are present in other co-design projects, but perhaps less often discussed.

Here we present new directions by exploring the affective and relational aspects of co-design and investigating how attending to and affirming affect in the process impacted educators’ lives beyond the co-design environment. We became interested in this topic during co-design meetings when educators started to describe the ways in which they drew on ideas and practices from the co-design process in other contexts, such as at home or at school. We began to wonder what it was that supported educators to take key learnings from the co-design experience into these other contexts. In this study, we draw on data from educators’ experiences of designed and emergent features of the co-design process to examine how attending to and supporting attention to affect and relationship helped to expand the original object of design for participants across multiple scales of practice in educators’ lives.

Theoretical framework

Three key constructs guided our investigation. First is the concept of expansive learning as involving both transformation of objects and “subject-subject relations” (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016, p. 176). Second is the idea of affect, the tangle of thought, feeling, and embodiment of our lived experience (Åhäll, 2018; Ahmed, 2014; Pedwell & Whitehead, 2012). Third are the concepts of compassion and dignity – which were both the focus of co-design and the affective stances in subject-subject relations we sought to embody in the very structure of our co-design process. We draw on the intersection of these concepts to understand the ways in which attention to subject-subject relations and their affective components enable the application of compassion and dignity across scales of practice. Attention to affect underscores the relational and emotional work that is involved in sustaining and scaling ideas and concepts.

Expansive learning: Transformation of object and subject-subject relations

We draw on cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) to conceptualize the role of affect in co-design processes. CHAT provides analytic tools by which to understand the relationships among subjects, mediating tools, and the object of activity, and the contexts in which they are situated. Specifically, we draw on and extend theories of expansive learning. Expansive learning theory posits that learning occurs as “learners are involved in constructing and implementing a radically new, wider and more complex object and concept for their activity” (Engeström & Sannino, 2010, p. 2), and the individual and collective agency of learners is an important component of expansive learning (Engeström & Sannino, 2010). Attending to the dynamics of partnering in co-design is valuable, because it not only shapes “the possible forms of subject—object relations that are imagined, enacted, and disseminated” (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016, p. 178), but it also has the potential to shift subject-subject relations (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016). We extend expansive learning theory to examine the ways in which the purposeful cultivation of care and attention to affect within co-design facilitated the movement of ideas and practices across scales of practice, and how this movement facilitated the expansion of the object of design (to design a compassion and dignity course sequence for educators).

The relational work that transpires within spaces of collective activity is often analyzed with respect to how participants in activity relate or orient to the object of work, rather than to one another (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016). Solely focusing on subject-object relations limits the scope of our understanding of participatory design because expansive learning in co-design often involves the transformation of people’s relations to one another (Philip et al., 2022) as well shifts in affect (Virkkunen & Newnham, 2014). In participatory design, the transformation of such relationships also can be a source of innovation—“axiological innovation”—that is, the exploration of new possibilities for being in relation to others in a way that attends to what is “good, right, true, and beautiful” (Bang et al., 2016, p. 29). In this study, we explore the conjecture that intentionally attending to affect within and among participants can be consequential for expanding learning across scales of practice. Our conjecture is grounded in the assumption that not only can such attention support axiological innovation by building among participants a keen sense of new possibilities for relating in schools; it can promote commitment to change in schools and in other domains of life. We refer to this second set of potentials as learning by expanding across scales of practice (Jurow & Shea, 2015; Nespor, 2008).

By scales of practice, we mean “the interrelations that exist and can be made between cultural practices, tools, and people that extend across particular spaces and times and thereby give meaning to situated social action” (Jurow & Shea, 2015, p. 287). Specifically, we are interested in the ways in which educators think about and enact compassion and dignity across contexts, times, and relationships to “reorganize and build toward more equitable futures within their communities” (Jurow & Shea, 2015, p. 288). We explore the conjecture that explicit attention to subject-subject relations and the affective nature of these relations supports learning to move and expand across contexts. Attending to how learning moves across multiple scales makes visible the work, especially the affective work, offering a mechanism to see how learning, defined as changing participation in changing forms of practices, can become meaningful and expansive (Jurow & Shea, 2015; Lave, 1996).

While the various professional roles that educators held in their schools likely impacted how they enacted compassion in their schools, in this study we focus on the movement of ideas and practices across contexts, from the co-design environment into educators’ professional and personal lives. In the context of co-design for compassion, the aim was to develop a curriculum to create flows of ideas and practices of compassion that could extend into schools and potentially disrupt interactions, policies, and routines that inhibit the enactment of compassion. We attend to affect so as to understand the ways in which compassion and dignity supported and enabled the application of learning principles across scales of practice.

Conceptualizing affect and its role in collaborative design

Affect theory posits that feelings and emotions motivate human action (Tomkins, 2008). Affect “is the name we give to those forces—visceral forces beneath, alongside, or generally other than conscious knowing, vital forces insisting beyond emotion—that can serve to drive us toward movement, toward thought and extension … ” (Seigworth & Gregg, 2010, p. 1). Affect can be positive (e.g., enjoyment), negative (e.g., fear), or neutral (e.g., surprise) (Tomkins, 2008). It precedes more conscious feelings and emotions (Shouse, 2005) and includes changes to the experiences of the body that shape capacities for action (Ng, 2014). Thus, affect is a pervasive quality of our everyday experience and always present within subject-subject relations.

Drawing on a feminist concept of affect, we define it as is the intertwining of thought, feeling, and embodiment within our lived experience (Åhäll, 2018; Ahmed, 2014; Pedwell & Whitehead, 2012). Ahmed (2010) describes affect as “stickiness” in that it is not experienced separate from emotion in everyday life, but rather affect and emotion “slide into each other; they stick, and cohere, even when they are separated” (p. 32). Affect is present as we come into contact with the physical and relational world and shows up in the ways that we and others are impacted in relation (Ahmed, 2014). It is always in some sense raced, classed, and gendered, in that some bodies generate different affective responses among others, depending on the context (Åhäll, 2018). In education research, there is strong evidence that educators’ affect shapes their own learning (e.g., Jaber, 2021), their engagement with external reform initiatives (e.g., Kelchtermans, 2005; Saunders, 2013), their identities (e.g., Zembylas, 2003), and student learning (e.g., Richards, 2020). Moreover, a growing body of research has examined the promise of interventions aimed at providing educators with skills and resources for supporting their social and emotional well-being in schools (e.g., Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Meiklejohn et al., 2012; Potvin et al., 2022; Roeser et al., 2012).

As a pervasive quality of experience, affect suffuses and supports collaborative design involving educators as well. As Ehret and Hollett (2016) argue, “affective know-how” enables human development via movement toward individual and collective change. It does so by building commitment toward a common goal and strengthening the connections needed for collective learning. Affective experiences of participants can make visible what is learned, what epistemologies are brought forth in design, and how identities can become consequential in collective action (Crunow & Vea, 2020).

Creating opportunities where affective experiences are valued and nurtured for the well-being of the group and for the success of the design requires intentional scaffolding and planning. Because co-design is both an emergent process and one that is highly facilitated, developing a trusting, caring, and humanizing co-design environment depends upon both the co-designers and the facilitators. Gomez et al. (2018) note that “researchers should scaffold the co-design process; this scaffolding should include social and emotional support” (p. 406). However, examples of how to provide scaffolding, what scaffolding for social and emotional support of stakeholders looks like, and how such scaffolding efforts impact what is learned and designed through the process are rare within the research literature. It is important to develop such examples, since it may be particularly challenging to scaffold because of the “feeling rules” that exist in schools as organizations, that is, the “cultural norms that govern both the display and the experience of emotions” (Lively, 2006, p. 570). Such rules often result in policing of expression of emotions in ways that are highly racialized and gendered (Cox, 2016; Lively, 2006; Wingfield, 2010).

Herrenkohl et al. (2010) provide examples of how to nurture affect within co-design in their teacher-researcher collaboration that was characterized by in-depth collaboration and mutual trust and support. Their work highlights key features to which the focal co-design process of this study also attended, including: the importance of establishing a shared vision and goals, attending to power and status through deep listening and treating each person’s ideas as valuable, and creating opportunities to give and receive social and emotional support so that “vulnerability was treated with the care it deserved” (Herrenkohl et al., 2010, p. 87). Here, we seek to extend this kind of reflective analysis to the study of co-design with a larger group of educators, where the object of co-design included direct attention to affective dimensions of experience, and where the object itself evolved through engaging in intentional work to build caring relations among participants as colleagues seeking to create more compassionate schools.

Conceptualizing compassion and dignity

The focal co-design process analyzed in this article sought to embody humanizing practices of compassion and dignity in the context of developing a course grounded in these constructs and that could, in turn, support educators to work toward more just, compassionate schools. We see the recognition of a person’s dignity and the cultivation of compassion for self and others as closely linked to affective experiences, to creating a humanizing learning environment, and as we conjecture, to facilitating expansive learning. As a core part of the work of co-design, participants learned to cultivate compassion as a process that involves both affective and cognitive dimensions for motivating helping behavior (Ashar et al., 2021; Goetz et al., 2010). In this paper, we focus on the affective stances (Goodwin, 2007) within ongoing activities, that is, affect-laden orientations to being in and participating in activity.

We define compassion as the recognition of another person’s suffering coupled with a response to relieve that suffering (Ashar et al., 2016; Jinpa, 2015). Attuning to another’s suffering and opening one’s heart to be moved by the suffering invariably involves both affective and cognitive dimensions of experience (Ashar et al., 2017; Jazaieri et al., 2014; Weng et al., 2018). Compassion can be practiced, cultivated, and sustained through specific contemplative practices (e.g., meditation) and within group contexts that provide individuals with tools and resources to reduce the distress they feel when faced with another’s suffering and increase their ability to respond (Potvin et al., 2022). Key elements of cultivating compassion through contemplative practice include extending compassion to people experiencing suffering (both those for whom it is easy to generate compassion and those perceived as difficult), investigating obstacles to extending care to them, and recognizing that everyone is deserving of compassion (Jinpa, 2015). Cultivating compassion has the potential to support educators and researchers to engage in the work of critical care, that is, creating more equitable relationships and outcomes for students by countering deficit views of students and families that often permeate schools (Antrop-González & De Jesús, 2006; Rolón-Dow, 2005; Valenzuela, 1999). Furthermore, cultivating compassion can sustain educators’ hopes and dreams and commitments to the profession in challenging times through the integration of compassion and dignity for self and others.

A stance of dignity is closely connected with that of compassion. To adopt dignity as an affective stance in relationship begins with a recognition of a particular aspect of our common humanity, namely the inherent value of each person. This recognition is also, as Espinoza et al. (2020) point out, contingent on the “substantive intra- and inter-personal learning experiences that recognize and cultivate one’s mind, humanity, and potential” (p. 326). Co-design projects that center the expertise, contributions, and agency of team members hold potential for affirming the dignity of team members “because of their focus on equality, mutuality, and/or reciprocity, in contrast to more traditional, transactional models” (Riedy, 2021, p. 1055).

We contend that co-design can be a site for the cultivation of stances of compassion and dignity in everyday subject-subject relations and for creating more compassionate and dignity-affirming experiences through intentionally designed participant structures. As described in the next section and elsewhere (Potvin et al., 2022), those participant structures include opportunities for engaging in contemplative practices focused on self- and other-compassion and recognition of common humanity, opportunities to reflect together on everyday interactions through lenses of compassion and dignity, and opportunities to imagine new possibilities for their schools. We contend that such co-design participant structures can serve as a dignity-affirming experience, when educators’ lived experiences, including their affective experiences, are elicited, honored, and valued in the context of their participation. The concepts of compassion and dignity not only can guide the co-design process and product, in this sense; they can also be the focus of an analysis of the co-design experience, as they are in this study.

The current study

In this study, we focused on the co-design process for an online course for educators seeking to cultivate more compassionate schools where people relate to one another in dignity-affirming ways. We sought to address three research questions:

How did affect and relationship show up in co-design for educators?

How did the affirmation of affect and relationship in the co-design process support the movement of ideas and practices across scales of practice?

How did the movement of ideas and practices facilitate the expansion of the object (to design a compassion and dignity course sequence)?

Participants

Co-designers were ten educators from one school district in the Rocky Mountain Region where we had an established partnership and five university-based researchers. The school district served approximately 29,000 PreK-12 students. The district’s student population included 67% of students who identified as white, 19% of students who identified as Latinx, 6% of students who identified as Asian, 6% of students who identified as two or more races, and 1% of students who identified as Black. Twenty percent of students in the district received free or reduced lunch and 9% were multilingual learners.

Educators from the district were invited to participate in an 8-week compassion training offered by the Compassion Institute and to participate in a co-design process for developing a four-course sequence on compassion and dignity. Interested educators completed a brief application to gather information about them, including their position, grade(s) and content area(s) they worked with, and school. Applicants also responded to questions about their interest and their experience with compassion and developing curriculum. Educators were selected for the project based on the diversity of roles they held within the district and their stated interest in compassion. In all, 16 educators were selected to participate in the project; six of these educators ultimately decided not to participate because of scheduling conflicts and time commitments. The ten educators who participated in the co-design project were eligible to participate in the study. A member of the research team invited educators to participate in the study during an in-person, voluntary meeting. The researcher described the study, including the time commitment involved and dates of meetings. Educators were given the opportunity to ask questions and review the consent form. All educators provided informed written consent to participate in the study in accordance with the university’s institutional review board procedures. Study participants included five teachers, three counselors, one principal, and one librarian from six elementary and middle schools (see Table 1: Participants). The majority of educators identified as white (n = 9), and one educator identified as Latinx and white. Educators’ average years of experience working in schools was 15 years.

Table 1. Participants.

Educator Pseudonym	Level	Role
Bridgette	Middle School	Teacher
Amara	Middle School	Teacher
Jessica	Middle School	Teacher
Michael	Middle School	Principal
Mia	Middle School	Teacher
Nora	Elementary School	Teacher
Donna	Elementary School	Librarian
Martin	Middle School	Counselor
Ruth	Elementary School	Counselor
Sienna	Middle School	Counselor

Co-design context

The co-design project was focused on the design of a digital course sequence for educators on compassion and dignity. The goal of the course sequence was to provide educators with support and resources for caring for themselves and for cultivating and sustaining compassion for students, students’ families, colleagues, and their school communities. The co-design project aimed to organize an online graduate-level year-long four-course sequence that was to culminate in the development of a capstone project for educators in which they were invited to create, change, or eliminate a routine or practice in their schools that was a source of social suffering. The team met weekly between October 2019 through May 2020 for two hours a session, for a total of 58 hours. The co-design process was unique in that it provided opportunities for educators and researchers to: a) engage in contemplative compassion practices together, b) reflect and inquire into interactions in schools relevant to compassion, and c) design a course sequence for educators focused on compassion and dignity (Potvin et al., 2022).

We catalyzed our collaboration with a “bootstrapping event” (Penuel et al., 2007). The team of educators and researchers completed an 8-week contemplative compassion training together to learn about the science of compassion and engage in secular practices for cultivating compassion grounded in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition (Goldin & Jazaieri, 2017). The 8-week training served to establish a shared foundation and framework for compassion that informed the co-design process and the designed course. The goal was to integrate elements of the 8-week program into a larger, year-long online course sequence as a foundation for educators to use to create more compassionate and dignity-affirming schools. Starting the co-design work with the compassion training, where all the participants, including the co-design facilitators and researchers, were positioned as learners, was intended to create a space where all participants acknowledged they each had expertise to bring as well as learning to do. This shared recognition of both expertise and opportunity for learning was intended to build a culture of respect, mutuality, and reciprocity.

Following the 8-week compassion training, the team met weekly in person until March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in statewide stay-at-home orders, and meetings occurred virtually until May 2020. The first (ASP), third (WRP), and fourth authors (SD) served as facilitators, planning and leading the co-design meetings. Meetings focused on a) application of contemplative compassion practices to support wellness, b) reflection and inquiry into sources of suffering in schools as opportunities for compassion, and c) design of content for the four-course, year-long online learning sequence focused on compassion and dignity. Facilitators sought to embody key design principles in their facilitation, including recognizing the dignity of members of the co-design and school communities and cultivating compassion for self and others (for further description of the co-design process, see Potvin et al., 2022).

Co-design facilitators centered the educators’ experiences, work, and school contexts, inviting educators to share their day-to-day joys and struggles with the group and to design with their classroom and school communities in mind. Facilitators designed opportunities for shared learning and guided contemplative compassion practices. Within the co-design work, participants shared meals (prior to the pandemic), discussed vulnerable experiences, expressed a wide range of emotions and feelings, and shared stories of their families and pictures of pets and kids.

Each meeting began with an opening practice, a guided meditation aimed at cultivating compassion, followed by a small group debrief of the practice and personal check-in. In these moments, all team members, including educators and facilitators, were invited to discuss their experiences of the practice as well as anything else they wished to share about their previous week. Meetings concluded with a brief practice and often included an invitation to share a word or two about how people were feeling at the conclusion of the meeting. At the end of one meeting, for instance, team members shared that they felt “inspired,” “grateful,” “connected,” and “changing.” The facilitation moves of the opening and closing practices served to create shared routines, embody design principles of compassion and dignity, and deliberately embrace and honor the full range of experiences participants brought to the process, and participants drew upon these experiences as they engaged in design work.

The middle of the meetings typically included design activities for the compassion and dignity course sequence along with opportunities for reflection and inquiry. Drawing upon the key principles and topics from the compassion training, facilitators also encouraged co-designers to draw upon their lived experiences from their personal and professional lives, situating design work within participants’ contexts. In addition, facilitators shared frameworks and readings aimed at guiding the team to understand suffering in both historical and social contexts as a way to support scale-making (e.g., Dutton et al., 2006; Garza, 2009; Ginwright, 2018). Facilitators used a variety of participant structures to engage all team members and invite the co-designers to share their ideas, hopes, and desires for the course. In many meetings, the co-design group self-organized into smaller subgroups to work on design tasks. In one meeting, for instance, small groups of educators and researchers worked on brainstorming ideas for the final capstone assignment of the course focused on developing a plan for transforming their schools into more compassionate places. One goal of the designed course was to support future educators taking the course to bring compassion and leadership to their school communities by identifying ways to create or adapt existing policies, procedures, and routines as part of action plans to bring compassionate leadership to schools and community settings and sustain their work in today’s increasingly challenging and precarious climate.

A subgroup of educators engaged in reflection and inquiry through the practice of writing field notes about their interactions in their school contexts that presented opportunities for compassion. Facilitators taught educators to write field notes about their micro-interactions as one practice to notice suffering in schools that they were not likely to otherwise see. Educators were instructed to write detailed descriptions of their interactions using low-inference observations and language (Emerson et al., 1995). Using a series of prompts that were co-constructed, educators then reflected on and analyzed their interactions using a lens of compassion. Prompts for reflection and analysis included, “What feelings, thoughts, emotions arose for you throughout the interaction?,” “How did you (or could you) care for yourself while also caring for others in this interaction?,” “What intention might you set for how you would like to respond to this type of situation in the future?” and “What can you celebrate about this interaction?” In this early instantiation of writing field notes within the co-design context, educators wrote about their interactions with students or colleagues, as well as observed interactions between students. In each field note, educators identified that students, educators (including themselves), or sometimes both were experiencing suffering. Educators shared and discussed their field notes with other team members as a way to support them in considering and generating alternative compassionate interpretations of interactions (Creese et al., 2008), including the various reasons why a person might be suffering related to intrapersonal factors, interpersonal interactions, or systems-level policies, practices, or routines (Potvin et al., 2022). The joint inquiry into field notes was also an important design activity in that educators generated specific situations where compassion could be offered in schools to alleviate suffering and it encouraged participants to take their understanding of compassion across scales of practice (Potvin et al., 2022). Moreover, the co-design team, based upon their own experiences of writing and engaging in joint inquiry into field notes, decided to include writing field notes as a key assignment in the final course design.

Data sources

We collected and analyzed data from the 8-week compassion training and 14 co-design meetings (see Table 2: Summary of Meetings). Educators wrote reflections in individual documents following each compassion training session. The reflections provided an opportunity for educators to make connections between the session topics and their work in schools and to brainstorm ideas for the course design. These reflections provided evidence related to educators’ affective experiences within their schools and the compassion training. Educators spent approximately five minutes recording their ideas directly following each compassion training session. Educators responded to a series of prompts that were the same across each session: “Based on your experience of the training this week, what did you find most useful to you as an educator?,” “Based on your experience of the training this week, what did you find most useful to you personally?,” “What professional challenges, if any, are you currently experiencing that relate to today’s topic or session?,” “Based on your experience of the training this week, what ideas come to mind regarding the development of a digital compassion course that you’d like to share?,” “How has your home practice been going? What’s working? What, if any, challenges have you experienced?,” “What questions do you have? What do you want to know more about?”

Table 2. Summary of meetings.

	Session Focus
Compassion Training Sessions	Settling the Mind Loving-Kindness and Compassion for a Loved One Compassion for Oneself Loving-Kindness for Oneself Embracing Common Humanity Cultivating Compassion for Others Active Compassion Integrated Daily Compassion Cultivation Practice
Co-Design Meetings	Develop capstone assignment Read and discuss compassion research article; share field notes and engage in joint inquiry Plan and outline capstone course sequence and activities Read and discuss compassion research article; share field notes and engage in joint inquiry Continue to plan and outline capstone course Engage in a self-compassion activity; share field notes and engage in joint inquiry Community check-in at the onset of the pandemic (optional) Review and revise outline for first half of capstone course Share field notes and engage in joint inquiry; plan to integrate field notes into the course sequence Review and revise outline for second half of course Incorporate compassion training practices and exercises into the course Incorporate compassion organizing framework into the course design Determine outcomes that will indicate that the course is working as intended; reflect on the co-design process Engage with the concept of dignity by discussing its application to schools and identifying where in the course dignity will be addressed

In-person co-design meetings were audio recorded. When in-person meetings shifted to virtual meetings due to statewide stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic, meetings were recorded via Zoom. Audio files from each of the 14 meetings were transcribed. A member of the research team wrote field notes during each meeting to document progress on curriculum design, design decisions, and next steps agreed upon by the group. Researcher field notes also captured the topics and ideas that co-designers raised, the questions asked, and participants’ reactions. In addition, we collected artifacts created or modified during meetings. Artifacts included planning documents, such as scenarios developed by small groups that depicted a school-related situation and described how the educators offered compassion within the situation. Artifacts also included curriculum documents with co-designers’ written comments and feedback.

Another member of the research team (not a facilitator) interviewed eight of the educators at the conclusion of the study using a semi-structured interview protocol. Interviews lasted approximately 30 minutes. Educators were asked about their participation in the co-design process, their perspectives on compassion in schools, and their insights about the co-designed compassion course. For example, educators were asked, “How would you describe your participation in the co-design process?,” “In what ways did this experience impact you professionally? Personally?,” “Are there aspects of compassion in schools that feel challenging to you?” and “What do you think still needs work related to our co-designed digital course?” Interviews were transcribed for analysis.

Approval for the study was obtained from the University of Colorado Boulder Institutional Review Board, approval number 19–0844.

Data analysis

We used inductive and deductive coding to analyze the data and coded the data in cycles. We began by developing a codebook through identifying deductive codes from our conceptual framework. The first two authors (ASP and LPT) coded two meeting transcripts together using the deductive codes and developed additional codes inductively, revising the codebook (Miles et al., 2014). The first two authors then coded several transcripts individually until inter-rater reliability was established at 90% and coded the remaining transcripts using this codebook.

In first-cycle coding, we used Engeström and colleagues’ (2014) approach to analyzing expansive learning in deductive coding to look for the ways in which educators demonstrated agency throughout the co-design process, coding for resisting, criticizing, explicating, envisioning, committing to action, and taking consequential actions. To capture how practices of compassion moved across scales of practice, we used the deductive codes a routine or policy is mentioned and tells a story of care for self or other. As we applied these codes, we noticed that affective dimensions of educators’ experiences were referenced often but were not captured by these codes. To begin to capture these affective elements and experiences, we added inductive codes guided by our conceptual framework: describing or engaging in a humanizing interaction, and someone names an emotion or feeling. The code describing or engaging in a humanizing interaction included statements where a co-design team member recognized their own or another’s humanity, included statements that were dignity-affirming or oriented toward care for someone’s well-being, and pointed to a person’s affective experience. For instance, in one virtual meeting during the pandemic, the facilitator shared, “I like seeing pets. We shouldn’t see other beings right now being intrusions in these meetings, but as welcome parts of our lives. So, oh, look, we have some other wonderful beings here. So, feel free to allow the world to be around you right now.” Because we were also interested in how co-design environments that attended to affect are structured, we coded for facilitator moves. The code someone names an emotion was used every time a co-design team member, in speech or in written reflection, named or described an emotion.

Following this round of coding, we reviewed the codes. We looked closely at segments of data that were coded using more than one coding category to look for interactions between codes. For instance, when the codes “facilitator move” and “describing a humanizing interaction” appeared together, it pointed to the way the facilitator structured or influenced the co-design environment as humanizing. In reviewing the codes, we also discovered that someone names an emotion was applied 65 times across the data. This observation spurred us to engage in another cycle of coding to further understand the kinds of emotions participants named or described. We noted emotions that educators conveyed with positive valence, coding for example, “hopeful” and “excited,” as well as emotions that educators conveyed with negative valence, coding for example, “stressed” and “frustrated.” Careful not to ascribe our own meaning to educators’ descriptions, we read the coded excerpts in context to determine if what they described had positive or negative valence, or both, for educators.

Once meeting transcripts were coded, we coded participants’ reflections from the compassion training, the interviews, and relevant artifacts (such as curriculum documents with educators’ comments) using the established codebook. We used researcher field notes to identify facilitation moves within meetings and to confirm design progress and decisions that were noted within the meeting transcripts. Throughout the process, the first author wrote analytic memos, summarizing emergent themes. One memo, for instance, summarized how affect showed up for educators throughout the co-design process. In another memo, the author examined the ways in which educators used affective language with positive and negative valences. The first author continued writing memos to summarize the themes and shared them with the other authors for review. Key themes were discussed among the author team and checked against the data corpus.

Findings

Within the co-design process that aimed at designing a course sequence for educators focused on compassion and dignity, the team co-constructed a design environment that opened possibilities for agency, imagination, compassion, and dignity. Via intentional facilitation moves, participants were invited to share their affective experiences within the collaborative process and apply them to the curriculum design. As such, participants did not compartmentalize, showing only, for example, a professional persona. As the co-design process made room for affective expression, it supported movement across scales of practice, and the designed course thus embodied that same spirit to move beyond overly individualistic paradigms of compassion toward a more collective paradigm. In the subsequent sections we address our three research questions by examining the ways in which (a) affect and relationship showed up in co-design for educators, (b) the affirmation of affect and relationship in the co-design process supported the movement of ideas and practices across scales of practice, and (c) the movement of ideas and practices facilitated the expansion of the object (to design a compassion and dignity course sequence).

How affect and relationship showed up in co-design for educators

Throughout the design process, which included structured and facilitated opportunities for contemplative compassion practices, reflection, inquiry, dialogue, and collaboration, educators’ affective experiences were made visible within their interactions (i.e., subject-subject relations). The most explicit way that affective elements or experiences showed up in co-design and in the data was when educators named or described emotions they experienced. Sometimes these experiences were elicited, such as when a facilitator asked co-design team members to share a word about how they were feeling at the end of a meeting, and other times affective expression arose more organically, such as when educators recounted a story from their week about an interaction they had.

Educators described over 43 different affective experiences throughout the co-design process. Twenty-one of the affective experiences that educators described had a negative valence (e.g., frustrated, anxious). For example, Nora (all names are pseudonyms) described feeling frustrated when she asked for help from administrators and did not believe she received the assistance she needed. Nora explained,

I asked for a walkie talkie so that I could radio and say, “I need help in [my classroom],” and there’s not enough walkie talkies, or you can’t have a walkie talkie. It’s very frustrating … It just feels like I’ve asked and been unheard. That’s where my level of frustration has been getting. (Meeting Transcript_021820)

In another example, Jessica described a recent challenging interaction she had with a student. She shared with the group what it felt like being in the middle of that challenging interaction, describing it felt “like an anxiety. It’s tense, it’s hot, it’s stressful and it doesn’t feel good … And I think this is how it feels for the student, it feels like there’s no way out of it.” (Meeting Transcript_040720)

Twenty-two of the affective experiences that educators described had a positive valence (e.g., excitement, pride, gratitude). Amara, for instance, at the conclusion of a co-design meeting, shared that she was “feeling a lot of gratitude for this group and this work” (Meeting Transcript_041420). In another meeting near the end of the co-design process, Ruth summarized a conversation her small group had about the co-designed course, in which she shared her excitement and appreciation:

One of the things that we talked about in our group was how exciting it was to see the questions and the activities and what was being asked of students to reflect on, and the growth that could come from it … Showing up for [the] capstone [course], oh my goodness, you can rock a world. Those people [who will enroll in the course] are going to rock this world. So, I really appreciated that. (Meeting Transcript_051220)

The majority of affective experiences with negative valences were about difficult situations and interactions within educators’ school communities. Educators, for instance, shared about frustration from challenging interactions with students or colleagues, expressed that they felt stressed from the uncertainty caused by the pandemic, and described feeling fatigue from witnessing suffering in schools. In one meeting, after facilitators asked educators to share their field notes in small groups and discuss them, Nora shared her field note about a challenging interaction with a kindergarten student. In a small group discussion about her experience, Nora explained that she wrote about a “situation that wasn’t my best teaching moment because I felt like it brought up a lot. That is not me as a normal teacher, so I definitely focused on a time when I wasn’t my best self” (Meeting Transcript_021820). She went on to describe the moment when she lost her patience with the student, reflecting that, “It was hard. I definitely, in that moment, stepped out of my body, like, ‘What did I just do?’ I can’t take it back.” Through the discussion with her group, Nora revealed that she felt impatient and frustrated with the student and then immediately felt embarrassment and regret about the way that she responded to the student. Despite recognizing that in the moment she was “not my best self,” Nora selected this experience to share with the co-design team, signaling that she viewed the co-design environment as a safe place to do so.

After reading Nora’s field note and listening to her reflection, Mia empathized with Nora’s affective experiences and identified shared feelings of frustration. She responded to Nora: “These moments arise, and of course, I am human, too. And of course, we are both frustrated in this moment. Yeah, I’m having flashbacks to my day” (Meeting Transcript_021820). Mia’s response, characteristic of co-design team members’ responses to one another after sharing affective experiences, helped to further create an environment of compassion and dignity in which Nora could share and make sense of the incident. Nora told the group, “I’m a huge ruminator and anxiety will build.” She said, “thanks to the [compassion training], I really try not to do that anymore” and that “writ[ing] about the situation and think[ing] about it” was “really therapeutic” (Meeting Transcript_021820). The co-design process provided the opportunity for Nora to reflect on and process this challenging experience and explore her affective experiences, suggesting that she viewed the co-design environment as a welcoming place to share interactions that had been challenging to her. Nora attributed aspects of the co-design process to supporting her in making sense of the situation, specifically the compassion training and writing and discussing field notes.

Sharing and talking about stressors, challenges, and even obstacles to compassion in their school communities within the context of co-design contributed to strengthening the co-design community and to educators’ positive experience of co-design. Indeed, many of the positive affective experiences that educators shared were connected to the co-design process itself, indicating that having opportunities to discuss challenges from their days and how they felt about these challenges and then drawing upon these challenges to design the compassion and dignity course sequence for educators was supportive and motivating. Educators described the co-design process as one that fostered connection and rejuvenated them. Educators found that connections forged through the co-design process served as an antidote to feelings of isolation, self-criticism, and overwhelm. Feelings of isolation are prevalent in teaching (Schlichte et al., 2005), and such feelings were exacerbated by the context of the global pandemic. Bridgette shared,

One big takeaway from the co-design process was a strong sense of community. I can feel isolated sometimes in my job and it was amazing to work with so many people who have the common goal of bringing more compassion into the world. Especially in this time where there are so many things to be depressed about, this really restored my faith in humanity and helped me realize what is important in life and in my job. It helped to hear that others struggle with very similar situations in the educational world. I saw immediate impacts in my day-to-day life and my work. It has helped me bring a sense of compassion to every interaction with parents, students, and even my own family. (Reflection_051220)

Brigette, like other educators on the co-design team, felt a sense of community within the team. Revealing that she at times felt isolated or depressed, the co-design team had become a community, in large part due to members discussing these professional challenges and sharing their emotions with one another. Sharing these affective experiences helped Bridgette to feel connected to the group, to recognize her purpose, and to bring compassion to her interactions.

While the majority of the affective experiences that educators shared were positive regarding the co-design experience, for two educators this was not true at first. Initially, these educators did not recognize the expertise they brought to the process, which caused them to feel nervous or anxious. Despite these feelings, both educators continued to show up and engage, developing confidence in their expertise and in the co-design process and finding meaning in shared work. Ruth, for example, reflected at the end of the co-design process that she felt proud that she

work[ed] through my anxiety that I wasn’t going to be able to bring anything to the group or offer anything to the group because I was starting at a place where I wasn’t sure about any of it … What can I offer? … But finding the collective work and the collective energy and the collective conversations, everybody was able to add to it. (Interview_052620)

Both educators who expressed hesitation or uncertainty about the process continued to attend meetings consistently and made significant contributions to the course design. Bringing awareness to their emotions through shared contemplative practices and opportunities for reflection and discussion during the co-design meetings may have supported these educators to persist in the process and eventually find, as Ruth stated, support in the “collective energy and collective work.”

How the affirmation of affect and relationship supported the movement of ideas and practices across scales of practice

Throughout the co-design process, facilitators focused on dignity and compassion as design principles to be embodied within the setting of co-design, inviting affective experiences and relationships into the design process and positioning these experiences as expertise to be applied to the design of the compassion course. Inviting educators’ affective and relational experiences into the process meant making explicit space in the agenda to inquire about personal and professional experiences. In one meeting, the facilitator led a compassion meditation practice, and then invited participants to check-in about their experience of the practice, asking

What was that experience like for you inside your body? What did you notice and then what arises in you knowing this practice invites us to take in other people’s pain? … And check-in as you wish with people, just to say hi, how are you doing. (Meeting Transcript_042820)

The explicit attention to different arenas of educators’ lives helped to connect compassion and dignity to the many aspects of participants’ lives, supporting educators in developing a more holistic understanding of compassion and dignity. For example, following the statewide stay-at-home orders due to the global health crisis and the abrupt shift from in-person to remote learning, facilitators, recognizing the tremendous uncertainty and stress this caused, canceled the previously planned co-design meeting to provide educators time to attend to their needs and the needs of their families and to transition their schoolwork to online formats. Instead, facilitators offered an optional meeting with a very loose agenda for educators who desired a check-in and community connection. Several educators attended the meeting to debrief, share stories, and offer strategies and support to one another in dignity-affirming ways. The meeting began with the facilitator asking, “How are you doing personally? How are you doing professionally?” (Meeting Field Notes_032420). While there were tasks and agenda items, they were used as a suggestion, not as a didactic guide to organizing the co-design work so that educators drove the focus. One educator, Martin, posed a question to the group, “What practices are everyone doing right now?” as a way to share strategies and support one another in the unprecedented and precarious context of the start of the global health crisis. In subsequent meetings, facilitators responsively altered co-design activities to prioritize attention to the affective experience of educators and create opportunities to talk and listen to one another. This intentional invitation of educators as whole people with multi-faceted lives helped them begin to integrate these practices across settings.

In addition, as Martin’s question illustrates, educators also affirmed one another’s affective experiences and contributions as essential to the co-design community and collaboration. Michael explained that team members “each had potent contributions to the whole and this in turn makes me have a ton of confidence that the end result will be accessible to all who choose to take the course” (Reflection_051220). Educators contributed to the process and to the design their deep knowledge of teaching and learning and their insights into the daily joys and struggles they experienced both inside and outside of the classroom. In this context, the group recognized educators’ affective experiences as expertise in a way that affirmed their dignity.

Educators engaged in learning across scales of practice

The contemplative compassion practices and subsequent inquiry into those compassion practices that were woven into the weekly co-design meetings provided opportunities for participants to share and discuss their affective experiences and supported the possibility for the learning and experiences to have an impact across space, time, and relationships. Educators shared that such practices had become integral to both their personal and professional lives. Participating in co-design supported them in developing a home compassion practice, in which they engaged in informal (e.g., bringing awareness to a daily routine) and formal (e.g., contemplative meditation) practices that had been part of the initial shared 8-week training experience and that had been integrated into the start of weekly meetings.

Educators reported engaging deeply in the inner work that supports compassion in action and builds capacity for recognizing dignity. For instance, educators spoke about being metacognitive about their emotions and feelings, changing the ways they reacted to situations, recognizing the suffering of those around them, and increasing compassion for themselves. Educators also identified particular practices that had been introduced in the 8-week training and continued in weekly co-design meetings that supported them to be more compassionate such as bringing awareness to daily routines and interactions, setting intentions, and focusing on breathing during challenging situations. In several cases, educators had established a mindfulness or contemplative compassion practice prior to joining the team and these educators pointed to their participation in the co-design process as strengthening their practice. While not a requirement of the co-design process, many educators practiced compassion outside of the meeting times, connected practices to their personal lives, and brought compassion into their schools. In these ways, learning moved across individual, social, and geographic scales of practice.

Self-compassion was an important design and discussion topic introduced during the 8-week compassion training and by facilitators during weekly meetings, as the team worked to develop a compassion and dignity curriculum for educators during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several educators highlighted that they developed tools for self-compassion through the co-design process and self-compassion moved across spatiotemporal scales, as they applied these tools to their personal and professional lives. Facilitators often led self-compassion practices in meetings and the group engaged in discussions about the challenges to and tools for self-compassion, which connected deeply to educators’ affective experiences. Bridgette, for example, spoke about how challenging it was to bring compassion to herself, sharing,

Teachers stay up at night just worrying about kids. It’s all because we feel such a strong responsibility for all of these students. And we feel emotionally connected to them and it just can be like a really strong emotional toll and leads to that kind of burnout. And I think self-compassion is the first step and really dealing with that, and the more we kind of talked about that, I saw how important that is for educators. And it’s been really meaningful to me and helped me be better and more compassionate to my students when I am able to give myself a break and just not be in this obsessive thinking and worrying about how I’m perceived, or things like that. It’s really a transformational thing, I think. (Interview_060220)

Bridgette revealed how the emotional toll and stress from caring for students impacted not just her professional life, but her personal life as well. For Bridgette and her colleagues, the challenges of teaching transcended disciplinary content or curricula and evoked affective responses. Educators used self-compassion practices in work at school, taking these practices beyond the co-design environment. For Bridgette, this was a profound and even “transformational” experience, and one that was deeply embedded within the co-design process. Brigette’s experience of feeling “stress,” the “emotional toll” and “burnout” typified the kinds of experiences the co-design team aimed to address through the design of the compassion course, and she brought her firsthand experiences to bear on her co-design participation and the design of the course.

In addition to the self-compassion practices, educators enacted other contemplative compassion practices in their own schools that were first introduced in the 8-week compassion training and/or integrated into weekly co-design meetings, moving compassion across scales of practice. Examples included teaching intention-setting and breathing practices to students, talking to colleagues and administrators about compassion, and using compassion tools to shift interactions with students, students’ families, and/or colleagues whom they considered challenging.

Similarly, several educators reported bringing ideas from the co-design process into their schools, in ways that connected to their roles in schools—such as when Michael, a principal, shared research articles with his staff that the co-design team had read together or when Siena, a counselor, began writing field notes, a practice that the co-design team engaged in, to reflect on her interactions with students at school. In reflecting on her experience of the compassion training, Ruth, a counselor, highlighted the ways that the compassion training and the co-design experience bridged both personal and professional elements of her life. She shared,

And the whole idea of understanding and really thinking about how we all have our moments of suffering and we’re all really doing our best and all that. It’s not that that wasn’t anything that I was aware of but just brought it to a new level of awareness and understanding for me. So that was really important. And I noticed that I was really in a more grounded place all Fall, [it] just really did affect me, which carried over to my parenting, which carried over to my interactions with colleagues and my work with students, my understanding. (Interview_052620)

Engaging in contemplative compassion practices and establishing a routine of these practices marked new learning for Ruth. She underscored how important learning about compassion and contemplative compassion practices were for her, as she transferred this learning to her parenting and relationships with colleagues. Ruth revealed that she connected with the compassion practices on an affective level in that the practices helped her to feel more grounded. When educators, such as Ruth, engaged in compassion practices that they connected with deeply on an affective level, they were moved to apply concepts across scales of practice (for further elaboration on how educators offered compassion to themselves and others, see Potvin et al., 2022).

The co-design process invited learning across scales, impacting co-designers’ aims and visions for the course, and thus, ultimately the design of the compassion and dignity course sequence. As educators engaged in expansive learning across multiple scales of practice, it made available novel forms of participation that expanded the possibilities for what could be designed. Educators shared about their personal and professional lives within the co-design process, demonstrated agency by taking new compassion and dignity ideas and practices back into their personal and professional spheres, and these new experiences helped to inform the design of the compassion and dignity course as one that bridged individual practice and collective action.

Mia, who shared on several occasions that she had been experiencing a challenging year in her personal and professional life, recognized that many other educators may feel similarly and thus her struggles were important to bring to the design of the course and to the co-design process:

My stress as an educator was so heightened that I could engage in the thinking of designing a course … I’m in it. I can really speak to burnout. I can really speak to stress from this very real currently lived experience. (Interview_052720)

In recognizing her own stress as well as how her colleagues had similar experiences allowed for Mia to connect to the design activity more authentically. It provided a lens by which to consider relevant activities within the course sequence while simultaneously considering how to apply central concepts to her own life.

Co-designing a compassion and dignity course sequence for other educators was a unique experience for the educators, and it was one that differed from typical professional development opportunities. As Jessica explained, “What we’re talking about here [compassion practice] in terms of being a tool for teaching, this kind of bridges that gap of the personal development that becomes professional development” (Interview_052920). The co-design experience and the compassion and dignity course sequence offered skills beneficial to educators’ personal and professional lives, in her view. The invitation to examine one’s personal and professional life and to act with compassion and dignity in both contexts was a unique experience for educators, one that recognized educators as whole and worthy people. Meeting regularly with colleagues, developing community, engaging in contemplative compassion practices together, and working toward a shared goal deeply touched educators and supported them in applying their learning across contexts and relationships.

How the movement of ideas and practices facilitated the expansion of the object

As the co-design process unfolded, the object of co-design expanded. While the stated goal for the project was to design a compassion and dignity course sequence for other educators, educators joined the project for a variety of reasons. Educators’ initial goals included to learn more about compassion, connect with other educators outside of their schools, develop a compassion curriculum for students, support other educators to thrive in the profession, and create safer schools. Through participating in the co-design experience that encouraged collective action, affect, and agency, educators expanded their vision for the designed course to include a desire to create more compassionate and dignity-affirming schools and a more compassionate world. This was evidenced in the closing co-design practice, in which the facilitator asked each team member to share their hopes for the designed course: “Dedicating this work to school communities everywhere—may they be nourished, may they be connected, may they thrive and thereby change the world,” “May our work here together radiate out to create a more compassionate world,” “Dedicating this work to the deep belief that there are things we can change throughout own perseverance, compassion and care.” By the end of the co-design process, the object of design was no longer solely to develop a compassion and dignity course sequence or the individual goals educators brought to the project. A collective objective had emerged in which educators had developed a broader vision of supporting other educators to create more compassionate and dignity-affirming schools and develop a more compassionate world for their youth. As educators shared their affective experiences and these experiences were affirmed through the co-design process, possibilities opened for educators to cultivate compassion across scales of practice, which in turn helped expand the object of co-design.

This transformation addressed one of the critical design tensions the team faced. At the start of the co-design process, facilitators shared with the team that a key challenge for the design of the compassion and dignity course sequence we saw had been to imagine how the course could help educators connect individual insight developed through contemplative practice to a commitment to collective action for creating more compassionate, dignity-affirming experiences for students in schools. As we shared this challenge with educators, they joined us in this concern as we worked together toward developing the arc of the four-course sequence to support educators in leading compassionate and collective action in their schools. Some team members “got really excited” about designing for collective action and challenged others to accept responsibility for social and educational inequities by designing for more radically inclusive schools. The final compassion and dignity sequence reflects the movement from individual insight toward collection action by supporting educators to notice and reflect on their own experiences that either facilitate or challenge cultivating compassion and dignity, to build a foundation of awareness of social suffering, to practice self-compassion as an antidote to burnout and as a resource for wellness and positive relationships, to recognize one’s own and others’ dignity, to express compassion to increasingly wider circles of beings, and to create community-level action plans in small groups for alleviating social suffering in their schools for more details on the four-course compassion and dignity sequence, see Penuel et al. (2024).

Educators also began taking up compassion to introduce new practices into existing routines. These actions varied by educators, depending upon their roles within their schools. For instance, Michael, a principal started to open staff meetings with a contemplative compassion practice. Jessica, a teacher, began coaching colleagues who felt overwhelmed from the rapid transition to online teaching at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and she also began examining and revising grading practices. In addition, educators identified how some existing practices in their schools could provide a model for compassionate action to envision broader possibilities for their schools. Examples included supporting student-led initiatives (e.g., a student-organized school walkout for climate change), adjusting classroom discipline policies to work with students to develop a positive culture rather than removing students from the classroom, organizing a donation drive among faculty for personal and home items students in the school community needed (e.g., snow boots, kitchen items), and checking in with students more frequently through e-mail and phone calls during remote learning. Further, educators discussed routines or policies in their schools and districts that would benefit from change through a collective and compassionate approach, such as discipline, teacher evaluation, standardized testing, support for students experiencing trauma, professional development, and classroom-level routines. As educators enacted new learning in diverse social settings, in varied physical spaces, and over time, the lens by which they understood compassion became oriented toward collective change of systems. Thus, as we designed a course sequence to support other educators in shifting toward an orientation of collective action, co-design educators also expanded their vision to embrace a stance toward collective action.

After engaging in a shared reading on trauma informed care (Ginwright, 2018) provided by facilitators, educators discussed key insights gleaned and ideas for collective action in their schools. Michael, a school principal, shared that the article served as a

reminder to create those spaces for kids to be whole, and then out of that can emerge a lot of reminders that we’re not creating widgets here. We don’t have to fix all their problems. We just need to create spaces for them to be real. You can get so stuck in, oh, I got to figure out the amount of days to suspend this kid that’s going to change their life. How about zero. It’s crazy how the system is—you have to do so much work to not meet the needs of the system and meet the needs of the kid. It’s tiring. (Meeting Transcript_021820)

Michael revealed that he felt tired working in a system that was not designed to support the needs of students. He shared his affective response and continued to imagine collective change at a school-wide level that would support students’ healing, asking,

What are the cultural kinds of things that you can be doing to create healing spaces in your schools? Artwork, and lighting, and all that kind of stuff that I think so, when you walk into school, it’s not this additional traumatic event that the bathrooms can be gross, and I have to be scared in the hallway, and I can’t do my locker combination, and the series of things that we do to actually make it worse. (Meeting Transcript_021820)

Michael imagined his school as a place of healing, rather than one that made students feel worse. Through sharing his affective experience to the challenges working within the system and caring for students and in imaging school as a compassionate, healing place, Michael created space for Mia, a teacher at his school to respond and expand upon the goals for the designed course. She reflected,

I think one thing that came up is the systems are what they are, and that just the need as we designed this course … of really emphasizing the leadership piece of it beyond your personal practice and your personal small area of impact. But how can you really grow this to be an aspect of leadership in your community? (Meeting Transcript_021820)

Mia envisioned that the designed course could support future educators to develop as compassionate leaders in their communities, moving beyond their immediate sphere of influence. Siena further expanded this vision of moving beyond small, personal practices and interactions toward collective change, explaining,

It’d be really interesting to stop seeing school as a building and start seeing it as a community. I think until we and the school system see it as a community of people that interact and engage, then we’re never going to make a difference. I feel like even teachers, it’s a building that I come to and I leave instead of it’s a community and we’re all interdependent and interconnected within that community … But until we start engaging as a collective, we won’t make it. (Meeting Transcript_021820)

This discussion began with Michael expanding from the shared reading to reveal his affective experiences of feeling tired of working within the system. Space was provided for Mia and Siena to respond and affirm his experience and to envision new ways to cultivate compassion in schools. In doing so, they expanded the object of co-design to imagine ways to support educators to view their schools as compassionate communities.

As educators engaged in learning across scales of practice, they designed a compassion and dignity course sequence to support other educators enrolled in the course to also take their learning across scales of practice. As Mia described, the course sequence that was co-designed is unique and changes ways of participating across time, space, and social settings:

It’s just a personal shift in the way you live and see life that impacts your, I mean, everything. But definitely how you show up in the classroom, how you view your colleagues and parents and students. The entire learning community. It’s an inside-out job … And that’s what I think makes it really unique.

She continued to describe the impacts of the designed course:

It’s like this ripple out effect, right? You start with yourself and your understanding of all this and your lived experience and then it ripples out to impact the community, and hopefully, if you’re able to really bring in that leadership piece, impact your school staff and leadership. So that actually ripples out even further. (Interview_052720)

Educators like Mia recognized the significance of designing a course to support other educators in learning across scales in a “ripple out effect.” Just as educators experienced the impacts of the compassion training and co-design process on their personal and professional lives, they aimed to do more than just design a compassion and dignity course sequence; they hoped that the course sequence would support educators to “ripple out” compassion beyond themselves and into their communities, their schools, and the world. Ruth described, “this is a class that introduces and deepens one’s understanding of compassion and the way that compassion is helpful on an individual, collective and global manner” (Interview_052620).

Educators shared how they not only extended practices of compassion and dignity to their school communities, but also to themselves and their personal communities, and as a result, designed a course sequence that aimed to support other educators in acting with compassion and dignity across scales of practice. Just as the co-design process was built upon recognizing and affirming the dignity of the participants, educators understood that one goal was to provide a dignity-affirming experience for future educators enrolled in the course sequence. Some educators, for instance, understood the course sequence to address professional challenges they experienced, such as a “stressful, results-driven culture in education” (Bridgette Reflection_051220) or “how we treat each other and treat ourselves” (Nora Reflection_051220), thus creating opportunities for future educators to bring their struggles and joys to bear on course content. Jessica described the compassion and dignity course sequence as addressing a sense of isolation and fostering a sense of connection.

Teaching can be so isolating that I think this is a great tool for teachers in those moments of isolation. In those moments of losing your temper with a class, and those moments of staying awake at night suffering … This is an excellent tool for teachers to have when they are just with themselves. So much of teacher professional development is “What can I do, how can I change this?” And this is just about “How am I? How do I be?” I’ve never had that addressed in education. And yet those ideas of staying awake at night, of really emotionally investing are core [to the teaching experience]. (Interview_052920)

Jessica underscored the uniqueness of the co-designed course sequence—noting that professional development for educators focused on questions of “How am I?” and “How do I be?” is rare but necessary for educators’ well-being and professional growth. Jessica believed that the co-designed course sequence would help act as a bridge between educators’ personal and professional lives, as it focuses on educators’ wellness and addresses educators’ relationships. And, drawing upon her own experiences in the compassion training and co-design sessions, Jessica signaled that the designed compassion and dignity course sequence can help other educators move their learning across scales of practice as it addresses important affective questions of “How am I? How do I be?”

Discussion

In this study, we sought to understand the ways that educators and researchers engaged in the co-design of a course sequence to support educators to create more compassionate and just schools, and how they created a co-design space that was dignity-affirming and centered humanizing interactions. Cultivating an environment of compassion and connection invited collaborators’ personal and professional joys and challenges to the co-design process as a form of embodied expertise. Building these meaningful connections that honored the variety and complexity of collaborators’ experiences enabled individuals to carry an affective stance of compassion and dignity across scales of practice and expand their vision for the shared work. Educators’ experiences of learning across scales of practice informed the design of the course sequence. Educators enacted compassionate changes within their schools and personal lives and designed a curriculum that could support future educators to do the same. As such, we argue that attention to the affective and relational aspects of co-design strengthens the engagement in the co-design process, enables learning to move across scales of practice, and in turn facilitates an expanded vision for the design.

In education research, there is evidence that co-design with educators can promote teacher learning (Kyza & Agesilaou, 2022; Philip et al., 2022; Voogt et al., 2016), advance educator agency (Ko et al., 2022; Severance et al., 2016), and lead to the development of innovations that are relevant, feasible, and contextualized (Penuel et al., 2007). Our findings are resonant with recent findings on educator learning within co-design by reminding us that learning is imbued with affect (Hascher, 2010; Jaber, 2021; Zembylas, 2003) and that affect is a salient dimension within design environments (Ehret & Hollett, 2016). The findings also underscore the importance of attending to relational and affective experiences as a central component of participatory design work (Gomez et al., 2018; Herrenkohl et al., 2010). Further, this study contributes to recent research that points to the importance of cultivating personal relationships characterized by care and dignity within research-practice partnerships (Riedy, 2022; Riedy & Penuel, in press). Collaborative design and learning, regardless of the object of design, necessarily involves deep relational work that benefits from close attention to the affective experience of collaborators.

We build on these findings by offering a new, axiological justification for engaging in co-design with educators: co-design with educators opens possibilities for humanizing design and research. While this study focused on the co-design of a compassion and dignity curriculum, we assert that it is imperative to ensure that co-design is a humanizing experience for the designers by attending to subject-subject relations, no matter the object of design. Designers bring their layered and multi-faceted identities and experiences, along with their joys, hopes, and struggles, into the design space and facilitators must make space for and attend to the relational and affective components so that people feel welcomed, included, seen, and cared for. It is our hope that by making visible the ways affect operated within the focal co-design process, it draws future co-design facilitators’ attention to the richness of the affective and relational experiences within the environment and invites intentional planning for routines and practices that humanize the process.

Further, our findings point to the ways that educators’ affective experiences can create a context in which educators can share a range of affective experiences and where these experiences are affirmed, that both propels them toward new commitments and helps them wrestle with persistent inequalities. We saw evidence, for instance, that through making room for expressing frustration and anger toward institutional practices in schools that are assumed to be fixed and unchangeable, as well as celebrating everyday joys and accomplishments that are all too often unnoted, there is potential for co-design to disrupt existing institutional logics (Bridwell-Mitchell & Sherer, 2017).

Our findings add to emerging literature on the role of affect in co-design by indicating how reflection and collaboration, as well as affective stances of compassion and dignity, enable people to participate in new ways and envision new possibilities for organizing activity across geography, social relations, and time, creating impactful and enduring practices. We observed that educators in co-design saw the applicability of compassion not only for informing the development of the course, but also for their day-to-day practice and to support schoolwide changes. Individually, many educators also saw the relevance of compassion to their relationships outside of school.

Collectively, the co-design team’s work involved a transformation of the object of co-design, to entail shaping action across scales of practice. When educators reveal their affective responses and experiences within the group, a culture emerges where a breaking down of what is “given” in schools is legitimated, and it is this process that supports the expansion of the object. When participatory processes attend to and affirm the affective and relational experiences of participants, what gets counted as relevant to the work is expanded as well, because the field of application expands across scales of practices, moving beyond traditional paradigms of academic knowledge and codifiable skills. In doing so, the less visible aspects of educators’ lives are invited into the experience, and in turn, the learning is made accessible across time, place, and social conditions.

Identifying and strategically leveraging and expanding expertise and contributions is a central component of co-design, and more broadly, participatory work (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016; Teeters et al., 2016). Attending to what comes up and working to mediate the environment to make space for a variety of affective experiences expands what gets counted as expertise and what experiences are visible in the design work. Co-designers’ felt experiences are a relevant contribution that can and should meaningfully inform the design of the product. Making visible the emotional labor of collaborators can result in more equitable design processes. If the labor involved in responding to the affective quality of collaboration is not made visible, there is a risk that this work will fall inequitably on differently gendered and racialized bodies. Naming affect as a resource for design that exists within a co-design team makes more visible the work that is done to responsively hold space; this is an important first step toward recognizing and addressing such potential inequities. Traditionally, affect, emotions, and feelings have been highly regulated in “professional” settings, resulting in gendered and racialized ways of policing emotions (Cox, 2016; Lively, 2006; Wingfield, 2010). When affect is seen as an avenue by which to express one’s perspective and point to the salience of particular experiences, it becomes a public resource for collaborative design. And when those expressions are valued and honored by others, they invite further expressions that can enrich the group’s work and contribute to the co-creation of a humanizing environment.

Centering compassion and dignity in co-design and research requires careful attention to the humanity of the educators who engage in collaborative design as well as careful attention to the humanity of educators for whom we are designing. Such research necessitates analytic tools by which to understand how collaborators with varying identities and lived experiences are impacted by and contribute to the shared work. Analyzing educators’ affective responses to activities in the co-design process and to their experiences from outside of the co-design process allowed us to see dimensions of expansive learning in a different way from an analysis that might have focused solely on relations of persons, tools, objects, and communities within and across systems. Instead, affect helped us see expansive learning as it moved both “up and down, outward and inward” and as it engaged “issues of subjectivity, experiencing, personal sense, emotion, embodiment, identity, and moral commitment (Engeström & Sannino, 2010, p. 21). In our context, making room for affective expression showed how “downward and inward” work could support “upward and outward” learning.

Conclusions and future research

We conducted an in-depth qualitative analysis of the experience of ten educators from a local school district who participated as co-designers in a year-long process. While this study contributes to our understanding of the humanizing practices within co-design and how affect can support the enactment of compassion across scales of practice, there are several limitations when asking the question about how this context can help to expand activity theory to attend more fully to affect. The research team had a previously established partnership with the district, which likely facilitated and strengthened trust within the group, and this may in turn have impacted educators’ willingness to share their affective experiences within the co-design group. Next steps for research should address the ways in which attending to affect in the co-design processes necessitates learning for educators working within a variety of settings and districts.

This study coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused much uncertainty, suffering, and disruption to people’s lives around the world. The onset of the pandemic created an intensified need to continue to cultivate an environment where participants could share their affective responses during so much uncertainty and suffering. There will always be events and situations that impact co-designers, and we argue that creating opportunities for participants to acknowledge and share their affective experiences within the co-design process is essential for individual and collective well-being and for creating humanizing environments.

As facilitators we committed to providing opportunities for educators to discuss affective experiences throughout the co-design process at the onset. While our early research questions focused on educator learning throughout the co-design process, we did not initially set out to investigate how affect could support the enactment of compassion across scales of practice. Rather, this focus emerged through our analysis process and within the context of the global pandemic. We acknowledge that there were many affective experiences that remained hidden to us as researchers and to the co-design group. We did not consider our own affect as participants in the space—and how navigating new and uncertain conditions of the pandemic shaped the choices we made along the way to shift different aspects of co-design to allow for a more humanizing culture to emerge. Such an analysis would require a different approach than we have taken here. Future co-design research could gather educators’ self-report data on their felt experiences at key moments during the co-design process. Given the humanizing nature of this work, we suggest that this data is best captured through educator interviews, reflections, and educators’ field notes.

In addition, we recognize that the professional roles that educators held within their schools (e.g., principal, teacher, librarian, counselor) were imbued with varying levels of power, which likely impacted how they enacted compassion within their schools. An analysis of the ways in which power influenced the movement of compassion across scales of practice remained underdeveloped in this paper. Future research in the learning sciences could examine the role of power and positionality in enacting compassion across different contexts.

Our work indicates that attending to affect has the potential to invite more equitable participation within co-design groups and create humanizing design environments. There is a need for investigations that attend to the ways in which co-design spaces that center compassion, dignity, and affect are co-created within groups that are more racially and ethnically diverse than the participants in this study. As such, future directions in the learning sciences include: (a) further theorization of the role of affect in expansive learning and scale making, (b) the potential for attention to affect to support equity-oriented initiatives, and (c) analytic tools that make affect, and its contributions to design, more visible.

In this study, we examined the ways that a co-design process driven by participant structures designed to support the development of affective stances of compassion and dignity invited and acknowledged educators’ affective experiences as resources in design. Attention to affective experiences within co-design supported educators to engage in expansive learning across multiple scales of practice. The intentionality given to the experience of co-design supported participants in engaging in the co-design meetings, their professional contexts, and personal lives in new and expansive ways. As participants enacted their learning across scales of practice, they were presented with new understandings of the focal content, and in turn developed a designed product that embodied expansive and compassionate learning. Our analysis underscores that researchers and facilitators must attend to the process of co-design, especially the affective experiences of participants and not just the product, to create humanizing design and research spaces.

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Susan Jurow and Dr. Eve Manz for their thoughtful feedback on early drafts of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential competing interests were reported by the first three authors. SD reports receiving royalties for books based on mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for new and expectant mothers and on behavioral activation, funding from NIMH and multiple foundations, and co-founding and receiving revenue from Mindful Noggin, Inc, which supports online dissemination of mindfulness and therapist training tools.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Renée Crown Wellness Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder .