Abstract
This paper explores what can be learned when educational research “fails.” Drawing on a Welland Trust–funded project in the North East of England that aimed to support care-experienced students transitioning from further to higher education, we reflect on why, despite sustained effort, there was a lack of engagement. We situate this “failure” within wider debates on participation and ethics in research with marginalised people. Rather than treating non-participation as absence or dis-engagement, we argue that it constitutes data – a response that signposts to systemic, relational and methodological tensions between researchers, institutions and the communities they seek to involve. Considering research fatigue, institutional gatekeeping and top-down assumptions within widening-participation work and drawing on concepts of refusal, silence and relational ethics, we reposition “failure” as an opportunity for learning about how research constructs and constrains voice, agency and belonging. We conclude with implications for design and governance of future studies with care-experienced and other seldom-heard groups, emphasising slower timelines, genuinely co-created processes and attention to relational trust.