A critical evaluation of the co-produced online pre-arrival course for international student nurses through a social justice lens

Highlights
• Co-production in nursing education is a contested praxis shaped by structural, epistemic, and power constraints.
• Applying Fraser’s framework reveals partial redistribution, limited recognition, and bounded representation.
• Student voice is included but often remains testimonial rather than epistemic in curriculum design.
• Co-production risks tokenism when decision-making power and evaluation remain educator-led.
• Socially just co-production requires redistribution of epistemic authority and shared governance, not just participation.

Abstract
As international student mobility continues to expand within UK higher education, international nursing students face complex transitions shaped not only by cross-cultural movement but also by the demands of academic socialisation into unfamiliar higher education systems. In response, a co-produced online pre-arrival course was developed with international student partners to support this transition. This paper presents a reflexive, theory-informed critical inquiry into the practice of co-production, rather than solely the course content, using Nancy Fraser's three dimensions of social justice—redistribution, recognition and representation.
The analysis generates three key conceptual insights. First, co-production partially redistributes informational resources but remains constrained by institutional power structures that limit epistemic and decision-making equity. Second, while student narratives enhance recognition, they risk reinforcing assimilationist norms when positioned as testimonial rather than epistemic contributions. Third, co-production often operates as bounded representation, where student participation is enabled but not fully extended to governance and evaluation.
The paper argues that co-production must be understood not as an inherently decolonising practice, but as a contested praxis requiring deliberate structural, epistemic, and power-related shifts. It offers a transferable framework for global nursing education to navigate tensions between professional standardisation and social justice agendas, and proposes principles for embedding genuinely transformative coproduced curriculum design.