By any other name? The impacts of differing assumptions, expectations and misconceptions in bringing about resistance to student-staff ‘partnership’
Abstract
Most of the existing literature on student-staff partnership explores the experiences of people who are keen to be involved and who have already bought into the ethos of students as partners. We explore the challenges of conducting student-staff partnership in the context of resistance. Specifically, we focus on the interpretations of ‘partnership’ by students and staff who were attempting to work in partnership for the first time. The views of the participants were captured during a six-month project in which four undergraduate students were employed to work with eight academics to re-design the second-year undergraduate curriculum on one programme. Notwithstanding an introductory briefing and on-going support, some participants showed indications of resistance. Our findings suggest that different perspectives on ‘partnership’ influenced participants’ experiences. We argue that assumptions and misconceptions around the terminology used to describe ‘students as partners’ practice may hinder the process itself, as some people may not ‘buy-in’ to the practice. However, despite the challenges of this project, the experience of being involved has led to reduced resistance and emerging partnership practices throughout the department.Citation
Healey, R. L., Lerczak, A., Welsh, K. & France, D. (2019) By any other name? The impacts of differing assumptions, expectations and misconceptions about student-staff ‘partnerships’. International Journal for Students as Partners, 3(1), 106-122.Publisher
McMaster UniversityAdditional Links
https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/ijsap/article/view/3550Type
ArticleLanguage
enISSN
2560-7367ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.15173/ijsap.v3i1.3550
Scopus Count
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