Engaging Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching

A Guide for Faculty

Alison Cook-Sather, Catherine Bovill, Peter Felten

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781118434581
• eBook ISBN:
  9781118836064
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

A guide to developing productive student-faculty partnerships in higher education

Student-faculty partnerships is an innovation that is gaining traction on campuses across the country. There are few established models in this new endeavor, however. Engaging Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching: A Guide for Faculty offers administrators, faculty, and students both the theoretical grounding and practical guidelines needed to develop student-faculty partnerships that affirm and improve teaching and learning in higher education.

• Provides theory and evidence to support new efforts in student-faculty partnerships
• Describes various models for creating and supporting such partnerships
• Helps faculty overcome some of the perceived barriers to student-faculty partnerships
• Suggests a range of possible levels of partnership that might be appropriate in different circumstances
• Includes helpful responses to a range of questions as well as advice from faculty, students, and administrators who have hands-on experience with partnership programs

Balancing theory, step-by-step guidelines, expert advice, and practitioner experience, this book is a comprehensive why- and how-to handbook for developing a successful student-faculty partnership program.

1
What Are Student-Faculty Partnerships?
Our Guiding Principles and Definition

Partnerships are based on respect, reciprocity, and shared responsibility between students and faculty. These qualities of relationship emerge when we are able to bring students' insights into discussions about learning and teaching practice in meaningful ways—ways that make teaching and learning more engaging and effective for students and for ourselves. In our own teaching and in the partnership work we have studied, we have found that respect, reciprocity, and shared responsibility are fostered when we draw on students' insights not only through collecting their responses to our courses but also through working with them to study and design teaching and learning together. So what do we mean by working with students in this way?

We begin this chapter with a discussion of the three principles that guide our vision of student-faculty partnerships, and we move from that discussion into our definition of student-faculty partnership. We then offer a brief story that illustrates what is possible when students and faculty engage in partnership. We conclude this chapter by reflecting on the ways in which our notion of partnership may seem radical—even countercultural—within many higher education institutions; however, this work is not without precedent. With this foundation established, we hope you can move through the subsequent chapters of the book with a clear vision of student-faculty partnership.

Guiding Principles for Student-Faculty Partnerships

All practice is guided explicitly or implicitly by underlying principles: they are the spoken or unspoken commitments according to which we act. We have come to believe that student-faculty partnerships rooted in the principles of respect, reciprocity, and responsibility are most powerful and efficacious. Each of these principles is foundational to genuine relationships of any kind, and each is particularly important in working within and, in some cases, against the traditional roles students and faculty are expected to assume in higher education. All three of them require and inspire trust, attention, and responsiveness. They embody what Delpit (1988) has described as listening not only with “open eyes and ears but also open hearts and minds” (p. 298), and they lead to informed action and interaction.

You are likely to have your own associations with each of these terms, so we spend a little time next explaining what we understand by respect, reciprocity, and responsibility, particularly within the context of student-faculty partnerships.

Respect

Respect is an attitude. It entails taking seriously and valuing what someone else or multiple others bring to an encounter. It demands openness and receptivity, it calls for willingness to consider experiences or perspectives that are different from our own, and it often requires a withholding of judgment. In our research, student partners frequently comment on the centrality of respect to their collaborative work with faculty; for instance, one student advises faculty to “be as open as you possibly can. The key to these types of exchanges is respect, honesty, and an ability to expose yourself to new and different perspectives.”

Partnership is built on and through communication. Therefore, this first principle is foundational to pedagogical partnerships because, as one student asserted, “You can't have good communication without respect. If I don't respect you, we can't communicate” (Sanon et al., 2001, p. 119). Since dialogue is important in any partnership, you need to establish respect between yourself and those with whom you work, through the expression and reception of open eyes, ears, hearts, and minds. While we advocate that everyone entering a partnership bring an attitude of respect, we have found that it takes time to build trust in practice. The structures and norms of higher education do not necessarily foster the kind of respect that makes student-faculty collaboration into genuine partnership work, so we urge you to take the time to nurture trust and respect.

Some manifestations of respect that you will see in the chapters of this book include the explicit and regular acknowledgment of the different perspectives students and faculty bring to this work. There are examples that make it clear that while student and faculty experiences, perspectives, and even goals are sometimes different, each is taken into consideration and valued. Respect also informs the structures that support the active and engaged participation of both students and faculty members: the examples of partnership in this book illustrate the range of ways that partners and programs create forums and projects that enable students and faculty to contribute in meaningful but different ways to exploring and developing pedagogical practice.

Reciprocity

There is a close connection between respect and reciprocity, the second of our principles. Lawrence-Lightfoot (2000) asserts, “Respect: To get it, you must give it” (p. 22). Likewise, Rudduck and McIntyre (2007) argue that teacher-student relationships “have to be respectful, and the respect must be in both directions” (p. 53). However, while respect is an attitude, reciprocity is a way of interacting. It is a process of balanced give-and-take; there is equity in what is exchanged and how it is exchanged. Therefore, what this principle embodies is the mutual exchange that is key to student-faculty partnerships. As we state in multiple places in this book, we are not suggesting that students and faculty get and give exactly the same things in pedagogical partnerships. Indeed, partnerships invite faculty and students to share differing experiences and perspectives; those differences are part of what can make partnerships so rich and diverse.

The most basic manifestation of reciprocity in partnerships occurs when students offer their experiences of, and perspectives on, what it is like to be a learner in a course while faculty offer their experiences of, and perspectives on, teaching that course. As the examples and statements we include throughout the book illustrate, when these distinct yet valid sets of experiences and perspectives are shared, partners have the potential to deepen understanding and improve teaching and learning. Reciprocity also involves students taking on some responsibility for teaching and faculty re-envisaging themselves not only as teachers, but also as learners alongside their students.

A general example might help illustrate this principle. In a dis­cussion among a group of students and a faculty member about revising a course syllabus, one student might explain how she experienced a particular assignment, noting how the framing question piqued her curiosity but that the grading rubric seemed to limit her creativity in responding to the assignment. Another student might have a different take on this, highlighting different aspects of the assignment and how they worked for him. A third student might agree with some points the first student made and some points the second student made, but have yet a third angle to share. The faculty member could explain what she had in mind with the assignment, the pedagogical rationale for it, and why she designed it as she did. In this exchange, each would gain insight into the others' perspectives, and the result might be that the faculty member affirms some aspects of the assignment and revises other aspects. The students develop a better sense of what is involved in crafting course assignments—an understanding that increases their capacities as students, with potential for future benefit. At the same time, the faculty member learns from students' perspectives that there are alternative approaches to inviting students to demonstrate their learning in this course, and which approaches students seem to value more and why.

Responsibility

Our third principle is both a prerequisite for, and an outcome of, student-faculty partnerships. One faculty member captured the connections between reciprocity and responsibility this way: “Participating in this project gave me a sense of students being able and wanting to take certain pedagogical responsibility, and the counter of that is me taking a learning responsibility.” In this recognition we see the give and take of reciprocity and we also see how partnership work changes student and faculty orientation toward responsibility. Students now have some responsibility for pedagogy and faculty share some responsibility for learning.

Reliability and trustworthiness, on both the student side and the faculty side, are essential if partnerships are to develop productively. At the same time, we find that participating in student-faculty partnerships prompts both students and faculty to be more responsible and responsive. In our research we have heard over and over the student refrain that collaborative work with faculty makes them realize that “it is up to the entire community to make learning spaces function, so that means students have just as much responsibility as professors.” As we will discuss in detail in Chapter 5, faculty who work in partnership with students typically have a similar reaction, often redefining their understanding of their responsibilities to the students they are teaching.

When both students and faculty take more responsibility for the educational project, teaching and learning become “community property” (Shulman, 2004a), with students recognized as active members of that community and collaborative partners equally invested in the common effort to engage in, and support, learning.

So What Exactly Do We Mean by Partnership?

Partnership is a slippery term to define (Harrison et al., 2003), and student-faculty partnership might be particularly so because of the vast diversity within higher education. However, Bird and Koirala (2002) identify four key qualities of meaningful partnerships that are closely related to the principles we offered in the previous section and that also inform our definition: (1) trust and respect, (2) shared power, (3) shared risks, and (4) shared learning. These qualities are not always present in college and university classrooms, but we believe that they can be cultivated and nurtured in ways that both constitute partnership and allow student-faculty collaboration to develop.

Partnerships rarely emerge suddenly in full bloom; instead, they grow and ripen over time as we engage with students. We invite students to think about the teaching and learning process. We solicit student feedback and then use that information to change our teaching. We create spaces in class for students to step into the role of the teacher by leading discussions or presenting their research. We challenge students to work together to solve complex problems or to make sense of difficult texts, while we listen carefully and watch, providing guidance or asking questions to help students avoid dead-ends and to focus on central issues. These practices, and many more, imply a degree of student engagement and activity focused on learning and teaching. However, they may or may not involve students collaborating with faculty as partners, or achieve the respect, reciprocity, and responsibility as we define them above, or reflect the qualities of meaningful partnership that Bird and Koirala (2002) identify.

We define student-faculty partnership as a collaborative, reciprocal process through which all participants have the opportunity to contribute equally, although not necessarily in the same ways, to curricular or pedagogical conceptualization, decision making, implementation, investigation, or analysis. This definition stands in contrast to the student-as-consumer model that has become increasingly prevalent in higher education. It also departs from the traditional “sage-on-the-stage” model of teaching. Partnership, as we define it, positions both students and faculty as learners as well as teachers; it brings different but comparably valuable forms of expertise to bear on the educational process. In this way, partnership redefines the roles of student and faculty not only in relation to one another but also in relation to the institutions within which we work. Partnership redefines processes and therefore our approach to analysis, pedagogical practice, and research in ways that emphasize affirmation as well as create opportunities for change.

We want to be clear, though, that when we talk of partnership (particularly when we use terms like “shared power”), we do not mean that faculty and students are the same. Hildyard and colleagues point out that “many participatory projects rest on the dubious assumption that simply identifying different ‘stakeholders' and getting them around the table will result in a consensus being reached that is ‘fair' to all.” They argue that “such an assumption only holds, however, if all the actors involved are deemed to have equal bargaining power (which they do not)” (Hildyard et al., 2001, p. 69). In student-faculty collaborations, we need to acknowledge that our roles, expertise, responsibilities, and status are different. And they should be. Partnership does not require a false equivalency, but it does mean that the perspectives and contributions made by partners are equally valued and respected and that all participants have an equivalent opportunity to contribute. We spend many years developing and honing our scholarly expertise. Likewise, students spend many years experiencing and, in some cases, analyzing learning that might or might not be optimal and engaging. Partnership brings these forms of experience and expertise into dialogue in ways that inform and support more intentional action. One faculty member who participated in a partnership program explained her understanding of this approach in these terms:

I think when most faculty hear of a program in which students are involved as commentators and collaborators, they assume that the program is giving the students unfettered authority or equality in the teaching process. But I realize now that taking student contributions seriously DOES NOT mean blindly or directly following their opinions and suggestions, but rather taking them seriously, carefully reflecting on and analyzing them, and then addressing the core concerns behind them in a way that is consistent with my overall goals and values.

So while we recognize that the partnership model we advocate represents a significant shift in attitude and approach, and in some contexts, perhaps a dramatic shift, we also want to emphasize that studying and designing teaching and learning in partnership with students does not mean that we simply turn the responsibility for conceptualizing curricular and pedagogical approaches over to students, nor does it suggest we should always do everything they recommend to us. Rather, it means that we engage in a more complex set of relationships involving genuine dialogue with students. Otherwise, we are in danger of what Cleaver describes as “swinging from one untenable position (we know best) to an equally untenable and damaging one (they know best)” (Cleaver, 2001, p. 47).

According to our guiding principles and definition, partnership involves negotiation through which we listen to students but also articulate our own expertise, perspectives, and commitments. It includes making collaborative and transparent decisions about changing our practices in some instances and not in others and developing mutual respect for the individual and shared rationales behind these choices. Indeed, it means changing our practices when appropriate, but also reaffirming, with the benefit of students' differently informed perspectives, what is already working well. Sometimes it means following where students lead, perhaps to places we may not have imagined or been to before. In all of these cases, respect and reciprocity are integral to the learning process: we share our perspectives and commitments and listen openly to st...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Series
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• 1 What Are Student-Faculty Partnerships?
• 2 Preliminary Questions about Student-Faculty Partnerships
• 3 Partnerships with Students
• 4 Program-Level Approaches to Student-Faculty Partnerships
• 5 Outcomes of Student-Faculty Partnerships
• 6 The Challenges of Student-Faculty Partnerships
• 7 Practical Strategies for Developing Student-Faculty Partnerships
• 8 Further Questions about Student-Faculty Partnerships
• 9 Assessing Processes and Outcomes of Student-Faculty Partnerships
• 10 Next Steps . . . Toward a Partnership Movement?
• Appendix I The Ladder of Active Student Participation in Curriculum Design
• Appendix II Guidelines for the Students as Learners and Teachers (SaLT) Program at Bryn Mawr College (Modified for This Volume)
• Appendix III Practical Strategies for Developing Student-Led Research Projects
• References
• Index