Students as Partners

A great starting point for faculty and students new to the idea of students as partners, this resource serves as an accessible introduction to partnership as a pedagogical framework.

Kylie Korsnack, Gabriel Matthews

This resource provides a brief overview of the key scholarship concerning student partnership and explores the commitments, potential impacts, and research-informed practices of the field. In our program, this resource is required pre-reading for those new to the idea of students as partners.

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Elon University Center for Engaged Learning

Students as Partners in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, or simply Students as Partners (SaP), is a pedagogical approach that has been embraced recently by many higher education institutions primarily in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia. SaP implies students and faculty/academic staff working in collaboration, as partners, to improve teaching and learning experiences (Mercer-Mapstone et al., 2017). Healey et al. describe SaP as “a relationship in which all involved – students, academics, professional services staff, senior managers, students’ unions, and so on – are actively engaged in and stand to gain from the process of learning and working together” (2014, p. 12).

www.centerforengagedlearning.org/resources/students-as-partners/

Instructional Practices / Students as partners

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This article provides a comprehensive review of the body of work on students as partners, as of 2017, revealing trends in that literature and outlining the implications of these trends for future research and pedagogical practice.

Kylie Korsnack, Gabriel Matthews

If you would like to understand the research supporting students as partners, or are looking to see what research still needs to be done, we recommend this comprehensive literature review.

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A Systematic Literature Review of Students as Partners in Higher Education

International Journal for Students as Partners

“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.

mulpress.mcmaster.ca/ijsap/article/view/3119

Instructional Practices / Students as partners

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This article highlights the way that student-faculty partnership work can contribute to and advance institutional efforts to create more inclusive and equitable classroom experiences for students.

Kylie Korsnack, Gabriel Matthews

This article is useful for those working within or building partnership programs focused on inclusive teaching. We appreciate how the authors model the ethos of partnership by providing insights from both the student and faculty perspective of working within each partnership model.

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Where Are the Students in Efforts for Inclusive Excellence? Two Approaches to Positioning Students as Critical Partners for Inclusive Pedagogical Practices

To Improve the Academy

Most educational development for inclusive excellence does not draw directly on the experiences and perspectives of students. This article presents two different approaches to positioning undergraduate students as critical partners in developing inclusive pedagogical practices. Co-authored by the directors of and student partners who participated in each approach, the article defines inclusive excellence and inclusive teaching and provides selected examples of partnership work that strives for equity and inclusion. It then describes our different approaches, discusses potential benefits of launching student-faculty partnership work through these approaches, and offers recommendations for developing pedagogical partnership efforts for inclusive excellence at other institutions.

doi.org/10.3998/tia.961

Instructional Practices / Students as partners

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In this essay, a student consultant reflects on her experiences as a social science student working in partnership with three different STEM professors; in doing so, the author argues for the value of partnership across difference.

Kylie Korsnack, Gabriel Matthews

We have included this essay as an insightful example of partnership told from the perspective of the student consultant. It also explores the doubts and challenges involved in pedagogical practice, modeling a way by which other student partners can conceptualize their own experiences.

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Growing Into Pedagogical Partnerships Over Time and Across Disciplines: My Experience as a Non-STEM Student Consultant in STEM Courses

International Journal for Students as Partners

“I don’t know anything about chemistry,” I thought, as I read an email informing me that my first placement as a student consultant with the Students as Learners and Teachers (SaLT) Program would be in an organic chemistry lab. I was a political science major. What could possibly qualify me to work with a STEM professor?

In this essay, I consider my role as a student consultant across these three partnerships. Each placement challenged me to adapt to new and unfamiliar subjects, different classroom cultures, and a variety of goals and intentions for the partnership. All three partnerships proved to be valuable opportunities for personal growth and development in my practice as a consultant, and together they convinced me that my non-STEM identity was an asset to my faculty partners and our work together.

mulpress.mcmaster.ca/ijsap/article/view/3443

Instructional Practices / Students as partners

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This open-access, interdisciplinary, academic journal is filled with personal accounts of working in partnership and a great venue for publishing reflections on your own partnership experiences.

Kylie Korsnack, Gabriel Matthews

If you are looking for examples of partnership from a particular disciplinary perspective or another highly specific context, this journal is a great place to start. The flexible and reflective nature of the journal also provides an outlet for creative, experiential writing about partnership.

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Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education

Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education (TLTHE) serves as a forum for the reflective work of college faculty and students working together to explore and enact effective classroom practice. Published three times per year, the journal is premised on the centrality to successful pedagogy of dialogue and collaboration among faculty and students in explorations and revisions of approaches to teaching and learning in higher education.

repository.brynmawr.edu/tlthe/

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This is a practical guide for anyone (students, faculty, educational developers) interested in starting a pedagogical partnership program at their institution.

Kylie Korsnack, Gabriel Matthews

Organized around nine key questions, this book walks readers through the process of building a pedagogical partnership program from the ground up. We used this book to guide our conversations as we co-created (with students, faculty, and staff) a pedagogical program at our institution.

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Pedagogical Partnerships: A How-To Guide for Faculty, Students, and Academic Developers in Higher Education

Alison Cook-Sather, Melanie Bahti, and Anita Ntem

Pedagogical Partnerships and its accompanying resources provide step-by-step guidance to support the conceptualization, development, launch, and sustainability of pedagogical partnership programs in the classroom and curriculum. This definitive guide is written for faculty, students, and academic developers who are looking to use pedagogical partnerships to increase engaged learning, create more equitable and inclusive educational experiences, and reframe the traditionally hierarchical structure of teacher-student relationships.

Filled with practical advice, Pedagogical Partnerships provides extensive materials so that readers don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but rather can adapt time-tested strategies and techniques to their own unique contexts and goals.

doi.org/10.36284/celelon.oa1

Instructional Practices / Students as partners

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This collection of essays highlights the experiences of students, faculty, and staff from a variety of institutional contexts and many different partnership program structures.

Kylie Korsnack, Gabriel Matthews

This book is filled with student perspectives and chapters co-authored by student-faculty/staff partners who share their experiences working in partnership together. In our partnership program, we regularly use chapters from this book to help us reflect on and make meaning of our own experiences.

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The Power of Partnership: Students, Staff, and Faculty Revolutionizing Higher Education

Lucy Mercer-Mapstone and Sophia Abbot (Eds.)

The Power of Partnership celebrates the nuance and depth of student-faculty partnerships in higher education and illustrates the many ways that partnership—the equitable collaboration among students, staff, and faculty in support of teaching and learning—has the potential to transform lives and institutions.

The book aims to break the mold of traditional and power-laden academic writing by showcasing creative genres such as reflection, poetry, dialogue, illustration, and essay. The collection has invited chapters from renowned scholars in the field alongside new student and staff voices, and it reflects and embodies a wide range of student-staff partnership perspectives from different roles, identities, cultures, countries, and institutions.

doi.org/10.36284/celelon.oa2

Instructional Practices / Students as partners

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