When Freedom Is Structured: How Do Paradoxes Shape Co-Creation in Learning and Teaching?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23726/cij.2026.1859Keywords:
Whole-class co-creation in learning and teaching, Student Agency, Creative Agency, Adaptive Teaching, Human-AI co-creation, Deeper LearningAbstract
Co-Creation in Learning and Teaching is increasingly discussed as a form of educational innovation, promising to cultivate Future Skills and strengthen student agency. Yet empirical evidence from school contexts remains limited, particularly on how co-creation is experienced at a classroom-level. Drawing on paradox theory, this qualitative case study examines which tensions occur during co-creation in learning and teaching in a secondary Deeper Learning setting. It investigates how students and teachers experience these tensions, and how they describe navigating them. Interview data reveal interwoven paradoxical tensions spanning interactional, professional, curricular, and technological conditions. Three tensions proved especially salient: Structured Freedom, shifting teaching roles, and human–AI co-creation. These tensions functioned as activating conditions of co-creative learning, when they were kept in balance and approached with a both/and logic. The findings illuminate how Structured Freedom can operate as an organizing principle for enabling student co-creation, how students and teachers engage in co-creation at a classroom-level, how teacher roles shift and how ownership may have shaped AI use as support for students’ own idea development.
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