‘Every partnership [… is] an emotional experience’: towards a model of partnership support for addressing the emotional challenges of student–staff partnerships

ABSTRACT

The practice of student–staff partnerships is fundamentally about relationships. As new partnerships are formed, and existing power relations challenged, people experience a range of emotions. Despite their importance, there are few studies that have systematically researched the emotional challenges of student–staff partnership. Through a humanistic approach focused on analysing participants’ experiences of partnership we found that varying degrees of hope, pride, anxiety, and frustration were experienced by both students and staff in a curriculum development partnership project. We argue that effective partnership practices should recognise and support the emotional wellbeing of student and staff partners. Drawing upon the effective characteristics of partnership support found in this research and the broader literature, we propose a flexible support model drawing on (1) peer support, (2) mentoring, and (3) independent reflective writing. Partnership practice that actively supports the emotions involved in working in the partnership may encourage more partnerships in the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Students as partners
• emotion
• power relations
• student support
• model of partnership support

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the students and staff involved in this project for participating in this research with special thanks to Alex Lerczak and Katharine Welsh. We are grateful for the comprehensive and valuable feedback from the two anonymous reviewers which has led to a significantly improved paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by Research Excellence Framework monies through the University of Chester.