Reflecting gendered experiences of student-staff partnership: a student standpoint using poetic transcription

ABSTRACT

Debates in higher education problematise the role of students as passive receivers of education. In the student engagement field, some scholars argue that students should be positioned as ‘partners’ or ‘change agents’ rather than ‘customers’ or ‘consumers’. However, the opportunities for students to self-author their experiences as subjects rather than objects of engagement in mainstream publications is rare. Drawing on standpoint theory, we – three students from international contexts – argue that if students are to shape higher education discourses, then students’ work needs to be more prominent in mainstream academic publishing. We exemplify one approach to alternate forms of conducting and sharing student-led research by exploring and representing our own experiences of gender in student-staff partnership through poetic transcription. In doing so, we hope to disrupt some of the dominant assumptions around the positioning of students as objects and the validity of students’ self-authored voices in higher education discourses.

KEYWORDS:

• Student-staff partnership
• student experience
• student engagement
• gender
• poetic transcription
• standpoint theory

Acknowledgments

Thanks to our supporters and critical friends, Gina Mercer and Daphne Loads, for their encouragement and feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Lucy Mercer-Mapstone http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7441-6568

Anita Acai http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9901-2946