Going into Extra Time: Experiences of Knowledge Co-Creation in a Multi-stakeholder Research Partnership in Rwandan Eco-schools

This article uses co-creative reflexive dialogue to explore an experience of using knowledge co-creation as a research methodology in six Rwandan Eco-Schools. By exploring some of the expected and unexpected dynamics, challenges and opportunities, this research aims to contribute new insights into knowledge co-creation for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The article provides a rationale, as well as some principles and pitfalls of knowledge co-creation, before presenting an analysis of co-reflexive dialogue between the original research team members regarding their co-creative experience. The findings of the research reveal time to be the single biggest disrupting element in the knowledge co-creation experience. This was apparent from the very beginning and manifested in several different ways throughout the knowledge co-creation process. The relationship between the availability of time, motive for participation, and stakes of the different actors in the success or failure of the research, emerge as justice considerations within the findings ultimately calling for a commitment of all partners to the transformative aims of the research, even beyond the funder timeframe. The research concludes that there is a need for knowledge co-creation teams, project coordinators and research funders to consider, and be explicit about, the dynamics of time in the planning of future knowledge co-creation projects. The research also supports recent literature which calls for a more relational, imminent and contextual approach to ethics, and attends to ‘availability of time’ as an ethical consideration within knowledge co-creation research.