ABSTRACT
Students as partners (SaP) is gaining momentum as both a practice and as a subject of analytic inquiry. This study draws on interviews to explore how formal, senior leaders responsible for teaching and learning conceptualise and imagine the implementation of SaP. While leaders saw SaP as occurring within a range of activities, the concept was typically discussed in terms of quality assurance activities, seldom conceived outside of a neoliberal discourse, and often at odds with theorising of SaP in the literature. Three, overlapping themes emerged from our analysis: (1) where partnership happens; (2) how partnership happens; and (3) benefits of partnership, which we interpreted through the lens of neoliberal rationalism. The findings have important implications for the compatibility of partnership practices with the neoliberal university and the role that formal leaders can play in shaping SaP practices.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the participants in our study; to Naima Crisp and Yiet Hean Goh for conducting interviews; to Sarah Brady for early analysis; and to Alison Cook-Sather and Peter Felten for critical feedback on the manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Kelly E Matthews http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6563-4405
Alexander Dwyer http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0543-6412
Stuart Russell http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0282-4970
Eimear Enright http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7206-4781