Comparing Students as Partners (SaP) in Higher Education in Australia and Japan (original) (raw)
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Studies in Higher Education, 2019
Students as partners (SaP) practices are emerging in today's universities as a means to offer a more participative agenda, and to transform institutional cultures within an increasingly economically driven higher education context. This study contributes to understandings of partnership approaches, which largely still remain under-theorised, through exploring the conceptualisation of SaP by institutional leaders, staff, and students. Drawing on data from concept map-mediated interviews, this article offers a counterview to recent studies that have depicted staff understandings of SaP to be firmly located within a neoliberal discourse. Rather, our interviews portray surprising overlaps within students' and leaders' conceptualisations of SaP, depicting recurrent themes of communication, dialogue, community, and enabling students to escape neoliberal constructions: to become 'more than customers'. This article ends with a consideration of how investigating the ways in which students and staff conceptualise SaP can be valuable, as partnership approaches become further prioritised in institutional strategies.
Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education, 2017
Ancient Ways of Doing As self-appointed learning and teaching student partners in the Telemachus Ancient History Mentor Program (Tele’s Angels) at Macquarie University, and avid scholars of the discipline of Ancient History, we are very familiar with Aristotle’s peripatetic style of engagement with his pupils at the Lyceum, Athens —walking and talking. What a joy it was to learn that the archaeological evidence at Nalanda University in India (established in AD 450) revealed that student and teaching living spaces were adjacent to a large learning space around a central podium. Both of these examples came into being long before Humboldt’s (1970) articulation of students’ direct involvement in speculative thinking and research communities without strictly planned courses in nineteenth century AD. Or indeed before Benjamin’s (2004) framing of the measure of university’s success through the productivity of its students—positioning students simultaneously as both teachers and learners in the twentieth century. When did the prominent role of students as active partners in the production and progress of knowledge cease to be standard or best practice? Now, as staff contributors to higher education over the past decade, we wonder: why is it so difficult to gain support for students as partners (SaP) projects, whether it be for institutional funding, or for departmental and faculty peer endorsement and collaboration? Is it because it is perceived as a risky non-traditional pedagogy, despite historical evidence to the contrary? Could the answer lie in seminal SaP experiences in our own learning history/ies? Perhaps reflection on answers to these questions may provide opportunities to challenge and transform cultures towards SaP initiatives and ensure their sustainability as a fundamental learning experience within higher education.
Engagement through partnership: students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education
International Journal for Academic Development, 2016
In 2013 he received a SEDA@20 Legacy Award for Disciplinary Development. He is often asked to act as an advisor to projects, universities and national governments on aspects of learning and teaching in higher education. Mick is an experienced presenter. Since 1995 he has given over 500 educational keynotes, workshops, and conference papers in 18 different countries. He has given several keynote addresses at national and international conferences on students as partners and change agents. Mick has written and edited over 150 papers, chapters, books and guides, several of which have been published by the HEA. Further information is available from his website: www.mickhealey.co.uk. Abbi Flint has eleven years experience working in pedagogic research and educational development. Prior to joining the Higher Education Academy in September 2011, she was a Senior Lecturer in educational change in the Learning and Teaching Institute at Sheffield Hallam University, where she co-led the development of the institution's internal student engagement survey, led the institution's internal change academy and conducted qualitative research with staff and students. Abbi's role at the HEA concerns student engagement and partnership in their learning experiences, curriculum design and quality enhancement at the institutional and national level. She is an active qualitative researcher and has presented at numerous UK and international conferences and published research on a range of topics including: developing student engagement surveys, working with the NSS, student engagement in quality enhancement, running internal change academies, staff perceptions of plagiarism, and using peer-supported review in professional development for staff. She is also a Visiting Research Fellow in Student Engagement at Birmingham City University. As part of her current role she delivers consultancy in the UK and internationally, and works in partnerships with national sector bodies and networks.
This short paper defines partnership and both synthesizes and raises questions about the research on student partnerships in teaching and learning. Drawing on Cook--Sather, Bovill, and Felten (2014), the paper focuses specifically on what the authors' research suggests about the benefits and challenges of student--faculty faculty partnerships.
A Systematic Literature Review of Students as Partners in Higher Education
International Journal for Students as Partners, 2017
Students as Partners" (SaP) in higher education re-envisions students and staff as active collaborators in teaching and learning. Understanding what research on partnership communicates across the literature is timely and relevant as more staff and students come to embrace SaP. Through a systematic literature review of empirical research, we explored the question: How are SaP practices in higher education presented in the academic literature? Trends across results provide insights into four themes: the importance of reciprocity in partnership; the need to make space in the literature for sharing the (equal) realities of partnership; a focus on partnership activities that are small scale, at the undergraduate level, extracurricular, and focused on teaching and learning enhancement; and the need to move toward inclusive, partnered learning communities in higher education. We highlight nine implications for future research and practice.
Higher education, 2024
Engaging students as partners (SaP) is an approach promoting meaningful pedagogical relationships in higher education. Scholars have called for more culturally situated research on SaP that compares Anglophone countries with other contexts. In response, we conducted an exploratory qualitative study by interviewing 36 undergraduate students from Australia, Mainland China, and Hong Kong. Adopting the relational lens of SaP, the interviews focused on conceptualisations of pedagogical partnership, specifically learnerteacher identities and power dynamics. Through comparative and reflexive thematic analysis, we found that understandings of partnership in different contexts were influenced by broader cultural differences. The findings showed that the perception of SaP in Australia was consistent with the prevailing Western discourse, but the notion of SaP was adapted and reshaped in Mainland China, and in Hong Kong, there were diverse interpretations of it. This study contributes to new understandings of the influence of specific sociocultural and policy variations in SaP practises through culturally situated and comparative research using theorisations of perpetual translation. We argue for future research to contribute collective insights and nuanced, diverse understandings that expand SaP as an approach to global scholarship.
International Journal for Students as Partners
This paper situates Students as Partners (SaP) within the broader construct of student engagement so that we can examine the influence of partnership on student and staff participants and how this impacts on student and staff relationships. The findings of interviews carried out with students and staff (n=14), which aimed to capture rich descriptions of the lived experience of individuals, reveal that there was a high level of consensus between students and staff on how they described their lived experiences and the impact that partnership was having on them—particularly in relation to their personal development. Whilst it became apparent that the participants’ thinking and behaviours had changed as a result of their involvement in partnership, quite often the catalyst for this change was in relation to how the participants were feeling. Considerations for relevant stakeholders are highlighted to support the scaling up of a SaP approach.
Facilitating students as partners: co-researching with undergraduates in Asian university contexts
Educational Review, 2023
Students as partners (SaP) has become an impactful practice in higher education as it enables students to take ownership of their learning and exercise agency. However, the implementation of SaP, particularly in Asia, has encountered many challenges, including concerns about a large power distance between students and teachers. Despite the emerging interests in exploring SaP in several Asian regions, there have been few studies about students’ experiences of partnership throughout a project life cycle. This study explores students’ experiences of SaP in three projects spanning two research-intensive universities in Hong Kong based on the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and positioning theory. Data were collected from exit interviews with student partners, their reflective writings, and their responses to open-ended questions in a post-project survey. Our main contribution is the discovery of multiple contradictions between the project designs and students’ enactment of partnership. Specifically, students’ hesitation in assuming a partner’s role was related to their disciplinary identity, the inquiry methods of the projects, and the pre-determined project specifications. In contrast, the cultural factors, which are largely framed as barriers in the literature, only affected the partnership development at the beginning of the project. Our study implies that future SaP projects need to ensure the alignment between project designs and a partner’s role to facilitate equal and sustainable contributions from students and staff members.
Higher Education Research & Development
A body of literature on students as partners (SaP) in higher education has emerged over the last decade that documents, shares, and evaluates SaP approaches. As is typical in emerging fields of inquiry, scholars differ regarding how they see the relationship between the developments in SaP practices and the theoretical explanations that guide, illuminate, and situate such practices. In this article we explore the relationship between theory and practice in SaP work through an analysis of interpretive framing employed in scholarship of SaP in teaching and learning in higher education. Through a conceptual review of selected publications, we describe three ways of framing partnership that represent distinct but related analytical approaches: building on concepts; drawing on constructs; and imagining through metaphors. We both affirm the expansive and creative theorising in scholarship of SaP in university teaching and learning and encourage further deliberate use and thoughtful development of interpretive framings that take seriously the disruptive ethos and messy human relational processes of partnership. We argue that these developmental processes move us toward formulating theories of partnership praxis.