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Staff-student partnerships in higher education

Staff–student partnerships integrate several educational agendas including the research-teaching nexus; the student experience and measures of student satisfaction. Whilst increasing emphasis is placed on the ‘student voice’, it is often the case that views are sought via tokenistic processes rather than signalling genuine contribution. Therefore, this book is timely because it reflects growing interest in staff working in partnership with students to facilitate educational change. Sabine Little edits a collection of chapters, all written by staff–student teams. A range of partnerships are presented, drawing on experiences from England, Ireland, Canada and Australia. The result is an eclectic mix of innovative practises, each with a common goal of forming new working relationships with students based on collaboration, cooperation and equality. The approaches described vary in their inclusion of undergraduates, postgraduates or both. Some are discipline-specific (e.g. in Chapter 6 medical students produced online tutorials and learning materials for fellow medical students), whereas others are cross-disciplinary (such as Chapters 4 and 13 which involved collaborations between the University and Student’s Union to explore plagiarism and perceptions of research). The partnerships position students in numerous roles including peer tutors (e.g. Drama students coaching Sports Development students in communication and presentation skills in Chapter 9); researchers and scholarly authors (e.g. writing for an undergraduate research journal in Chapter 12) and project team members (e.g. as paid interns promoting inquiry-based learning in their institutions in Chapter 2). Additionally, staff adopt varying roles including learning facilitators (on a problem-based learning module in Chapter 11); co-producers (through developing a reward scheme for postgraduates who teach in Chapter 7) and co-researchers and co-authors (through writing a collaborative undergraduate text with students in Chapter 14). Initially, the sheer diversity of staff–student partnerships and the differing writing and presentation styles of the chapters felt incoherent. I wondered if organising the chapters into sections based on common themes in the approaches adopted might have provided the reader with a clearer structure to ease navigation and provide linkage between chapters. However, on reflection, I came to appreciate the inconsistent approach of the chapters and recognised that they represented the disciplinary diversity and individual style which is so valued in academia. Some recurrent themes emerged through the text – several of which are discussed in the concluding chapter (Chapter 15). One of these is power, and how traditional staff–student hierarchical relationships impact on the formation of genuinely collaborative partnerships. Having open dialogue, with staff–student communication on the same level, was emphasised by many, along with managing Innovations in Education and Teaching International Vol. 49, No. 3, August 2012, 345–346