Steven J. Zuiker, Senka Rebac, and Michelle Jordan
This presentation explores how relational perspectives can support systemic educational design in response to planetary challenges. We focus on a classroom-driven participatory science initiative—Sonoran Photovoltaics Laboratory (SPV Lab)—that engages primary and secondary school students (ages 8-17) in exploring and shaping post-carbon futures in the US southwest. Across multiple courses in a graduate education program, we examine how university students partner with primary and secondary educators to enact and advance relational and pluriversal forms of engagement to support SPV Lab during a 15-week semester. First, guided by the Students-as-Partners (SaP) framework, we employed a mixed-methods design involving ten master’s students and three educators. We used the SaP radar method to visualise and reflect on dynamics of collaboration—such as shared vision, trust, student agency, and inclusion—through survey data and focus groups. Second, we thematically analysed three course reports from three project teams to characterise varied three forms of relational engagement: retrospective, implicit, and emergent. While each team made progress towards relational engagement, pluriversality—the co-existence and legitimacy of diverse worldviews—remained aspirational. We conclude that collaboratories can support more relational, inclusive approaches to education and participatory science, but sustained and reflexive design is necessary to move beyond bounded co-design towards transformative, networked systems. Rather than offering fixed models, we propose a relational approach to inquiry that embraces complexity, fosters vulnerability, and centres co-creation as key to navigating shared global futures.
Keywords: relationality, pluriversality, participatory science, students-as-partners, collaboratory, systemic design, energy transitions, graduate education