How do faculty and students meaningfully engage in partnerships to improve teaching and learning? What structural and institutional mechanisms support this kind of engagement? How do power differences between faculty and students impact engagement, particularly for students? Within the context of these questions, we (one faculty, one graduate student, and one undergraduate) examine Canadian cases to incorporate the principles of students-as-partners in teaching, research and institutional practices. Informed by international literature on students-as-partners (see Cook-Sather, Bovill, and Felten, 2014; Healey, Flint, and Harrington, 2014; Werder and Otis, 2010) as well as critical and feminist pedagogy (Fraser, 2009; Freire, 2000) we seek to identify sites of harmony and sites of dissonance between students-as-partners principles and practices, to help teaching and learning become more responsive to the tensions inherent in efforts to adopt students-as-partners principles. Specifically, this session includes: 1) a brief introduction to the literature on students-as-partners, 2) examples of student-faculty partnership from our own institutional contexts, and 3) participant discussion (using a jigsaw) of examples of student-as-partners practices they have adopted or have seen adopted. Participants will be invited to identify sites of harmony (cases where participants believe the principles have been successfully applied in practice), sites of dissonance (cases where participants believe the principles have not been successfully applied in practice) and strategies for reducing dissonance. This session is of interest to faculty and students who are curious about engaging in partnership activities, educational developers who may be supporting partnership activities, and educational administrators involved in institutional change efforts.
Cook-Sather, A., Bovill, C., and Felten, P. (2014). Engaging Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching: A Guide for Faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Fraser, N. (2009). Scales of justice: Reimagining political space in a globalizing world. New York: Columbia University Press.
Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc.
Healey, M., Flint, A., and Harrington, K. (2014). Engagement through partnership: Students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education. York: HE Academy.
Werder, C., and Otis, M. (2010). (Eds.) Engaging student voices in the study of teaching and learning. Sterling, VA: Stylus.
