Exploring the role of conflict in co-creation of curriculum through engaging students as partners in the classroom

ABSTRACT

Engaging students as pedagogical partners aspires to reposition students with more agency within universities as egalitarian learning communities. The growing literature reports numerous beneficial outcomes of such positioning, yet many partnership opportunities are limited to small numbers of selected students in extra-curricular, quality-assurance efforts. Understanding how partnership can reach into the classroom space affords opportunities to expand both practices to more students and theorisations of partnership beyond the extra-curricular realm. Our study investigates how final-year undergraduate students experienced the shift toward partnership in the classroom. Thematic analysis of focus group conversations surfaced four interrelated themes that shared many similarities with existing literature, yet diverged in regards to the central place of conflict students navigated as power dynamics shifted. Conflict manifested as both internal (within individual students) and interpersonal (among students and between students and the teacher). We argue for deeper attention to conflict, including its generative potential, in partnership practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Students as partners
• pedagogical partnership
• decision-making
• conflict
• co-creation
• assessment

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to colleagues who acted as critical friends, offering insights and counterviews that enhanced this article: Catherine Bovill, Abbi Flint, Niamh Moore-Cherry, Caelan Rafferty, and Cherie Woolmer who read an initial draft; and Alison Cook-Sather who read later drafts.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

The University of Queensland ‘Undergraduate Research Scholars’ and ‘Student-Staff Partnership’ schemes provided funding for the two student co-authors.