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Shared power: previously excluded students, families, and communities co-create and shape educational systems, policies, and practices

Pattern · All patterns
Evidence · 30 claims (18 for, 11 mixed, 1 against) · 23 studies (14 qualitative, 4 design, 2 review, 1 causal, 1 associational, 1 theoretical), q1–q2 · 0 of 23 report an effect size · 30 claims rest on one study

Description and scope

A reusable policy for giving students, families and communities who are present in an educational decision process, but cannot use its decision-making machinery, an actual share of the decisions: document where the group drops out of deciding → set up a body (or seats) with written decision standing → redesign the meeting's tools (language, agenda, pacing, ground rules) around the group → run a cycle in which staff support is handed over to the group → report back what was done with every recommendation → track participation, decisions changed and adoption, and plan for leadership turnover. It applies to school and district policy (school safety, school climate, a programme's evaluation survey), to a school's or classroom's learning environment co-created with students from the identity groups that most often experience inequities, and to civic or organizational processes such as participatory budgeting. The intended change is in the group's sustained participation in the deciding phase (persistence), in its members' sense of entitlement to decide (motivation-affect), and in what the institution decides and keeps doing. The participants are adult family and community members, adolescent students and staff; the knowledge being built is a complex-skill (deliberating and deciding together) and an attitude-motivation target.

The policy's central relationship is the one the folded pattern Differentiated Activity Structures for Inclusive Participation named: when a group is in the room but structurally unable to exercise the decision (a "double-bind"), outreach plus interpretation into the unchanged process is expected to fail, and redesigning the activity structure is expected to sustain participation. One claim in this wiki tests a version of it, inside one case: in a Chicago ward's participatory budgeting, outreach plus sequential interpretation lost all seven Latino volunteers within two meetings, while a Spanish-Language Committee with decision standing sustained participation through a full cycle [+M]. That is a before/after comparison of two iterations at one site, with the researcher as co-designer and no comparison ward. No claim in this wiki compares the redesign with a partial version (own-language deliberation without a separate body, say), and none measures a learning outcome for students. The other claims are interview accounts from district–community co-design projects of what participants perceived and what made the work last. The sequence below is therefore the earlier pages' guidance, kept as a default with each step's evidence status stated; the response-dependent branches are untested proposals.

It sits beside two converted principles. Community-Based Learning owns the relationship of learners contributing to a community as a way of learning course content; this page is the reverse direction, the community's members taking part in deciding how the school works. Culturally Responsive Classroom Norms owns widening a classroom's norms of talk and participation; this page uses the same move at the scale of a committee or policy process and does not repeat that model.

Inputs: establish the design brief

Field Record or elicit
The group and its starting observation Who is meant to share power (students, families, a language community, staff), and what happens now: attendance by group across the last few meetings, who speaks in the input phase and who in the deciding phase, and whether the group's priorities ever reached the agenda. Record observations, not labels such as "hard to reach".
The decision on the table What exactly can be decided (a budget share, a policy draft, a survey, school norms), by whom, and what the institution is bound to do with the group's decision or recommendation. If nobody can say, that is the first finding.
Context and activities Setting (classroom, a school, a district, a civic process), meeting mode (in person, remote, mixed, phone-only), languages spoken, meeting length and frequency, the cycle length (single-session, days-weeks, term-plus), who facilitates and how much of their time is available.
Learner-valued goal Ask the group's members what they want from taking part (a specific change at their school, being heard, a skill, a credential, a safer route to school). Record where it differs from the institution's objective and keep both.
Designer or institution objective Which of these is the target: a decision made with the group, a sustained structure, a co-designed artifact (framework, survey, norms), or members' capacity to lead. Name the one that will be checked.
Outcome Attendance by group per meeting across the cycle; who speaks and decides in the deciding phase; recommendations made, adopted, declined (with reasons given); whether the structure survives a leadership change; and, separately, participants' own account of whether the outcomes they defined were met.

A request to "co-create with families" or "add student voice" does not specify these. Ask what decision is on the table and what the institution will do with the group's answer before choosing a structure.

Sequence and conditional policy

The default sequence joins the two folded pages' guidance. Step 1 and the structure in steps 2–3 have the one case behind them; steps 4–7 rest on interview accounts or are untested. Doses are proposals for a decision cycle of one school year or one budget cycle; shorten them proportionally for a shorter cycle.

  1. Document the double-bind (2–4 weeks, before anything is redesigned). Observe two or three existing meetings; count attendance by group at each; note where the group is present but silent or absent, especially in the deciding phase; and name the interactional mismatch (long turns interpreted one after another, an agenda that leaves out the group's priorities, meetings at times the group cannot attend). Talk directly with members of the group where they already are, rather than sending a survey. Evidence status: the participatory budgeting case [+M] documented exactly this drop (seven at orientation, one at the second meeting, none after); coalition members held that systems change needs direct engagement with communities rather than passive feedback requests [+W] is their view, not a test.
  2. Give the group a body or seats with written decision standing. Write down which decisions the body makes or co-makes, what share of the budget or policy it controls, and what the institution must do with its recommendations (adopt, or decline in writing with a reason, within a set time). Make it a full deliberative body, not a listening session or a subcommittee that reports upward. Evidence status: the same case [+M]: the Spanish-Language Committee had standing as a full decision-making body. Untested against a body without that standing.
  3. Redesign the meeting's tools around the group. Deliberate in the group's own language rather than through turn-by-turn interpretation; let members put their own priorities on the agenda; set ground rules with the group before the first working session (honesty, confidentiality, listening without judgment). Hold meetings of 60–90 minutes every two to four weeks across the cycle (proposal). Evidence status: own-language deliberation and flexible agenda norms are part of the participatory budgeting redesign [+M], not tested apart from it; youth designers asked for ground rules before a sensitive activity so participants feel safe [+W] is one design record.
  4. Hand the work over across the cycle. Early sessions (first quarter of the cycle): staff facilitate, bring data in a usable form and model the decision steps. Middle sessions: group members co-facilitate and interpret data with staff. Late sessions: members run the meetings, decide and present; staff support on request. Name the role shift aloud ("you are deciding, not advising") and leave ten minutes of each meeting for the group to reflect on what it decided. Move to the next stage when members are running the previous stage's tasks without being prompted (proposal). Evidence status: co-leadership was more evident where staff support let partners progressively take on inquiry, facilitation, interpretation and decision-making, and less evident where staff carried the process [+M], from staff reflections across projects; the timings are untested.
  5. Close the loop on every recommendation. Within two weeks of each decision (proposal), report back in the group's language what was adopted, what was changed and what was declined, and why. Evidence status: youth advisors reported that students were not adequately involved in decisions, that surveys were the usual channel and that follow-through on feedback was unclear [~W] (four interviews); district leaders filtered student and community voices through their own perspectives and kept security personnel despite calls to end policing [-M] shows what an unwritten decision rule allows.
  6. Track two kinds of success separately. Group level: attendance by group per meeting, members' claims-making ("we have the right to…"), decisions the group changed. System level: whether the structure is adopted by other units, written into policy or kept after the cycle. Add participants' own judgment of whether the outcomes they defined were met, as a third and weaker signal. Evidence status: the case found the two levels separable [+M]; Core Team participants in four pilot districts perceived that their co-designed solutions met the outcomes they had defined [+W] is self-report with no independent outcome measure.
  7. Plan for turnover and embed the structure. Before the cycle ends, write the body into an existing system (a standing committee, the school improvement plan, a budget line), secure support at more than one level of the district, and brief any incoming leader. Evidence status: teams that sustained co-designed solutions did so through buy-in at several levels, iteration, embedding in existing systems and showing benefits [+M]; staff turnover was named as the critical threat to sustaining them [~M]; the WSS authors argue durability depends on institutionalizing engagement as core practice [~W] (their interpretation, not a result).
Observation Discriminating probe Proposed action, with its uncertainty
The group's attendance falls after the first one or two meetings Ask members privately (in their language) what made it hard to come back: time, language, not being able to affect anything, or something at home. If it is not being able to affect the decision, the problem is standing, not outreach: return to step 2. If it is time or travel, move the meeting or add a phone or remote route. More reminders alone is the configuration the case saw fail. Untested branching.
Members attend input sessions but not the deciding sessions Compare attendance and speaking turns in the two phases. Bring the deciding into the group's own body or language; do not ask the group to defend its priorities in another body's format. Carried from the one case [+M].
Recommendations go up and nothing visible comes back Check whether the decision rule (adopt or decline in writing) was written down and followed. Report back on every recommendation; if the institution cannot, call the body consultative in its name. Proposal; the filtering case [-M] is the failure it guards against.
Staff are still running agendas, data and minutes by mid-cycle Ask who prepared the last two meetings and who presented. Hand over one task per meeting (agenda, then data reading, then facilitation). Calibrated support [+M].
One or two members speak for the whole group Count speaking turns by person; ask quieter members in pairs before plenary. Use paired or small-group talk before decisions and rotate the facilitator role. Untested proposal.
A sponsoring leader leaves Ask whether the body appears in any written plan, budget or policy. If not, embed it before the next decision point and brief the successor. Turnover [~M].

Fitting the design to a situation

The three facts that most change the decision:

  • Whether the institution will actually cede the decision. The policy depends on a decision with written standing; without it, the honest design is consultation, named as such. If unstated, ask: what decision will this group make, and what happens if the board or principal disagrees?
  • What the interactional mismatch is. Language, meeting times, agenda control and pacing each call for a different redesign. If unstated, ask: in the last meetings, where did the group stop attending or stop speaking, and what was going on at that point?
  • How long the process runs. Handover of facilitation and the evidence on sustaining structures need a cycle of several months; a single meeting can only document the double-bind and agree what comes next. If unstated, ask: is this one event, one term, or a standing structure?
If the brief says… Then change… Basis
The group is adolescent students (student voice on climate, safety, a programme) Give students seats with a stated decision, advance notice of every meeting and a written description of each role; hold meetings in school time; report back to the wider student body in a form they use. Students wanted advance notice and clarity on scheduling and roles [~M]; youth advisors on inadequate involvement and unclear follow-through [~W]; both interview accounts, not tests
The group is child learners (under 12) and the target is the classroom environment Co-create a small number of class norms or one routine with the children (15–20 minutes, revisited every few weeks); the teacher states in advance which decisions are the children's. Untested; from the folded principle Co-create learning environments with and for students from identity groups that most frequently experience inequities, which cited no claim
Families or community members speak a language other than the meeting's A body that deliberates in that language with its own decision standing; bilingual staff or a family liaison convenes it; bring its decisions to the joint body translated, not re-argued. Participatory budgeting case [+M] (one Chicago ward, adult immigrants); many districts employ family liaisons [~W] (a survey count of staffing, not of effect)
The excluded group is staff or instructors (adult-workplace), e.g. in a technology or evaluation design Frame them as part of the solution: design so the tool or policy supports their judgment, and give them a co-design role from the first session. Framing instructors as part of the solution shifted a design toward supporting instructor judgment [+W] (one project's dialogue)
Some members join remotely while others are in the room, or members have only a phone Run every deciding session so remote members have the same turn and vote (an agenda sent by text two days before, a phone dial-in, a round where remote members speak first, votes by text). Do not hold the deciding phase in a mode part of the group cannot use. Untested proposal; no claim here compares meeting modes
One facilitator for a large group, or scarce facilitator time (volunteers, a busy principal) Hand tasks over earlier: by the second meeting a member co-chairs; the facilitator's time goes to preparing data in a usable form and to the report-back, not to running discussion. Calibrated support [~M], carried to settings with less staff time than its projects had
A single session only Use it to document where the group drops out (step 1) and to agree with the group what decision it will hold and when it will meet again; do not call one session co-creation. Untested proposal
Participants have low confidence or low literacy in the meeting's language Oral deliberation in their language; visual budgets or options; decisions recorded by a scribe and read back; pairs before plenary. Own-language deliberation from the case [+M]; the rest untested
The brief names its own routine (its survey, its check-in, its meeting format or rubric) Keep it; change only what this policy says matters: who holds the decision, the language and agenda control, and the report-back. Each school designed its own alumni survey, with researcher support [+W] (a descriptive brief)
The brief has its own categories, outcomes or success criteria Use the group's own outcome definitions to judge the work and report against them; add attendance and decisions changed as observations, not as replacement criteria. Core Teams judged solutions against outcomes they had defined [~M]; districts piloting ed-tech defined success differently, which made a common standard hard to set [~W]: keep the group's definitions and add the shared observations alongside
The material is private or sensitive (experiences of policing, discrimination, immigration status) Members decide what is recorded and who sees it; consent before any quotation; ground rules on confidentiality set by the group before the first working session; a separate channel for what members will not say in front of officials. Youth designers' ground rules [+W]; CBO leaders described working through institutional hurt as part of the process [~W]
A fixed short time budget (e.g. 60-minute meetings) Per meeting: 5 minutes check-in, 10 report-back on the last decisions, 30 deliberation in small groups, 10 decision, 5 reflection on roles. Untested proposal
High stakes or contested policy (school safety, discipline, budget cuts) Write the decision rule before deliberation (what is binding, what is advisory, who can overrule and how they must explain it); publish each recommendation with the response. Leaders filtered community voices and retained security personnel [-M]
The product is a public framework, policy or plan with a real audience Members co-author and present it; credit the group by name where members agree; say in the document which parts the group decided. WSS co-designers described the process as novel and replicable [+W] (perception; the source notes the novelty is contestable)
The brief wants the whole decision kept whole (the whole budget, the whole framework) Give the body the whole decision to deliberate and let it set its own agenda within it, rather than pre-cutting items for it to rate. Flexible agenda norms in the case [+M]; untested apart from the full redesign
Leadership turnover is likely (new principal, new superintendent) Embed the body in an existing structure before the change; get support at several levels; brief the successor. Sustainability factors [+M]; turnover [~M]; a standing committee structure keeps change going through turnover [~W] (consultants' experience)

Twelve of the sixteen rows cite a claim; each such claim is a single study, and every one is carried beyond the setting it reports, as its Basis cell says. The rows for children and classroom norms, mixed modes, a single session and a fixed time budget are untested proposals or the folded pages' guidance.

Choosing configurations from evidence

Do not read participants' satisfaction as evidence that power was shared or that outcomes changed: the perception claims are self-report from the people who ran the work. Do not rank this policy against consultation, advisory councils or interpretation-only inclusion on any learner outcome from these claims; none measures one. A precise abstention names the missing comparison (a redesigned body against interpretation into the existing body, or against own-language deliberation without separate standing, on sustained participation and decisions changed, across several sites) and the local observation that would stand in for it: attendance by group per meeting and the record of recommendations made and acted on.

The evidence by question

Further evidence, not yet read against this model

Claims the earlier page cited that are not core evidence above, each with what it is and how far it bears on this page.

Illustrative design instance and observation record

Invented illustration, not a tested design. A secondary school wants to revise its behaviour and safety policy within one school year. Attendance records show Somali- and Spanish-speaking parents come to the first open meeting and not again; the student council has no members from the groups most often excluded. The table changed the default: the school documents the drop over three meetings and asks parents, through a family liaison, why they stopped; sets up a parent body that meets in Somali and Spanish on Saturday mornings with a phone dial-in, and a student panel that meets in school time; writes down that the two bodies co-decide the policy's section on removals from class and that the principal must answer each recommendation in writing within two weeks; staff run the first two meetings, a parent co-chairs from the third, and the bodies present the draft to the governing board themselves. A parent says she wants her son to stop being sent home; the school's objective is a policy that cuts removals. They agree to track both the number of removals and whether families say they were told why. The participatory budgeting case covers an adult civic process in one ward, not this school, these groups or this horizon; these are local choices to observe, not settled ones.

Record: the decision on the table and its written standing → the group and its starting attendance and speaking turns by phase → the redesign made (language, agenda, times, mode, ground rules) → attendance by group at every meeting → who facilitated each meeting, and when tasks were handed over → recommendations made, and the response to each with its reason → decisions the group changed → whether the structure was written into a plan or policy, and what happened at a leadership change → the group's own judgment of whether its outcomes were met, kept apart from the institution's. Preserve each member's stated purpose and any change in it. An agent may summarize this record but must not fabricate missing inputs or claim that power was shared from attendance alone.

Elements and limits

Belonging, the Rightful Presence Implementation Guide, co-designed research questions, the method Make the Invisible Visible (Power Dynamics), the process Humanizing Co-design with Educators, and the strategies engaging student voice, family-school partnerships, listening to the voices of students in PBL and building a trusting community. Theory: Cultural-Historical Activity Theory reads the redesign as a formative intervention that introduces new tools and roles to resolve a double-bind, and the separation of group-level from system-level learning in step 6 comes from it.

This pattern is scoped to sharing a real decision with a group the existing process excludes. It does not cover consultation (gathering views for others to decide), which is a legitimate design if named as one, or classroom participation norms, which the culturally responsive norms principle owns. Whether a redesigned structure sustains participation better than partial measures, across sites, and whether it changes anything students learn, remains to be tested; the wiki's evidence is one before/after case and participants' accounts.

Claims

Examples

Key Sources

  • SWIFT Education Center. (2025, May). Rightful presence in education systems. https://swiftschools.org
  • Meléndez, J. W. (2021). Latino immigrants in civil society: Addressing the double-bind of participation for expansive learning in participatory budgeting. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 30(1), 76-102. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2020.1807349
  • Ellen Hawley McWhirter. (1998). An Empowerment Model of Counsellor Education. Canadian Journal of Counselling, 32(1). https://cjc-rcc.ucalgary.ca/
Page metadata
Field Value
type pattern
id shared-power-co-creation-of-educational-systems
aliases differentiated-activity-structures-for-inclusive-participation
title Shared power: previously excluded students, families, and communities co-create and shape educational systems, policies, and practices
description For a group present in an educational decision process but structurally unable to exercise its decisions, giving it a body with written decision standing, meetings redesigned around its language and agenda, facilitation handed over across the cycle and a report-back on every recommendation is expected to sustain its participation and change what is decided where outreach and interpretation alone do not; one before/after case in this wiki tests a version of this, and the rest is participants' accounts.
status review
moved_from principle/acknowledge-power-differences-not-false-equality, principle/co-create-environments-with-experienced-inequity-groups
canonical True
generated by claude/unspecified on 2026-10-14
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources 3 — swift-education-center-2025-may, melendez-2021, ellen-hawley-mcwhirter-1998

Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.