Responding to the challenges of student-staff partnership: the reflections of participants at an international summer institute

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to the growing scholarly literature about students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education by describing an initiative designed to support partnership and a study investigating international staff and student perspectives. The initiative – an international summer institute – is a four-day, professional development experience that brought together students and staff from seven countries to learn about partnership and develop specific partnership projects. Participants in the institute were invited to contribute to a qualitative study exploring their experiences of students as partners work and their perceptions of the institute’s capacity to support it. Given that much existing research on this topic tends to be celebratory, we focus here on the challenges participants ascribed to student-staff partnership, and on the features of the summer institute they thought particularly useful in helping them to navigate these difficulties. Looking beyond the summer institute, we consider the implications of these findings for those looking to support partnership more broadly.

KEYWORDS:

• Student-staff partnership
• students as partners
• international perspectives
• educational development
• institutional change

Introduction

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in scholarly attention to the notion of students as partners in learning and teaching within higher education contexts (e.g. Healey, Bovill, and Jenkins 2015; Werder and Otis 2010). Recognizing the potential benefits of moving beyond established efforts to simply listen to the student voice, partnership approaches seek instead to engage students and staff as collaborators on teaching and learning endeavors, establishing collegial working relationships based on reciprocity, mutual respect, shared responsibility, and complementary contributions (Cook-Sather, Bovill, and Felten 2014). As Healey, Flint, and Harrington (2014, 7) put it,

Partnership is framed as a process of student engagement, understood as staff and students learning and working together to foster engaged student learning and engaging in learning and teaching enhancement … It is a way of doing things, rather than an outcome in itself.

This type of partnership practice has been deployed within a range of higher education contexts, including curriculum design (e.g. Woolmer et al. 2016), pedagogic consultancy (e.g. Pounder, Ho Hung-lam, and Groves 2016), teaching, learning and assessment (e.g. Deeley and Bovill 2015), subject-based research and inquiry (e.g. Healey and Jenkins 2009), and the scholarship of teaching and learning (e.g. Felten 2013). Though there are differences in emphasis given the form partnership takes, authors have nonetheless consistently documented a number of benefits that accrue to implementing a partnership approach.

Amongst other benefits, for instance, scholars have highlighted that student-staff partnership initiatives often promote significant learning for those involved (Mihans, Long, and Felten 2008; Werder, Thibou, and Kaufer 2012), lead to richer and more effective work as a result of increasing the diversity of perspectives brought to bear on a task (Healey et al. 2013; McKinney et al. 2010), and enhance staff and student motivation or engagement (Bovill, Cook-Sather, and Felten 2011; Little et al. 2011). Some have also argued that partnership occasions productive shifts in identity and relationships, increasing participants’ understanding of other perspectives and roles (Pounder, Ho Hung-lam, and Groves 2016), fostering the development of trust between teachers and learners (Huxham et al. 2015), and enhancing students’ sense of belonging to their institution or discipline (Cook-Sather and Luz 2015; Moore-Cherry et al. 2016). Finally, some scholars have celebrated the potential for student-staff partnerships to destabilize repressive power structures and dominant discourses, suggesting, for example, that partnership might contribute to making teaching and learning more democratic (Cook-Sather and Luz 2015) and/or to shifting the currently prevalent, neoliberal metaphor of students as consumers of their education (McCulloch 2009; Neary 2014).

Such advantages notwithstanding, some scholars have also questioned the generally positive thrust of literature about student-faculty partnership, noting that such work entails considerable challenges in spite of its potential benefits (Allin 2014; Peseta et al. 2016). Many have outlined difficulties that attach to navigating longstanding power structures, for example, pointing out that such efforts often encounter resistance and incompatible institutional cultures (Bovill et al. 2016; Delpish et al. 2010), and that those attempting to step out of established roles can experience uncertainty and discomfort (Cook-Sather 2014; Marquis et al. 2016). Some have also noted the ways in which time constraints impinge on partnership, emphasizing that trusting and collegial relationships cannot necessarily be developed quickly, and that student connections to institutions and projects are often comparatively short (Bovill, Morss, and Bulley 2009; Levy, Little, and Whelan 2011). A final concern raised in the literature is the relative inclusivity of partnership initiatives, as some scholars note that partnership opportunities are frequently available to only a select number of students and thus may serve to foreground a limited number of perspectives and refortify existing inequities in the process (Felten et al. 2013; Moore-Cherry et al. 2016).

Given such overlapping challenges and benefits, scholars have called for the creation of developmental opportunities that support staff and students in learning about and working in partnership (Cook-Sather 2014; Marquis et al. 2016). This article describes one initiative – an International Summer Institute on Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education – designed to respond to this call. By examining the ways in which participants in this institute perceive partnership and the institute’s capacity to support it, we aim to contribute to understandings of how partnership is felt and experienced by its practitioners and how it might best be facilitated and developed.

The international summer institute

The idea of holding a summer institute grew out of a number of conversations in the autumn of 2015 between the two staff authors of this paper. We quickly decided that we wanted the institute to be international, both in approach and in the delegates we attracted. We were fortunate to persuade Kelly Matthews (Queensland, Australia) and Peter Felten (Elon, USA) to join us in the running of the Institute. We also wanted students to be involved actively in planning the event from the outset, and so invited the second author of this paper to join the team as soon as the decision to run the institute was finalized. Additional students/recent alumni from McMaster, Queensland, Elon and Trinity University (US) joined us to help design sessions as plans progressed.

A key feature of the institute from the beginning was that it should involve students and staff, if possible, in roughly equal numbers. Hence we advertised for staff to bring a student with them and students to bring a staff member. We also subsidized the fee for student participants and later obtained a grant which enabled us to waive the fee for students. However, perhaps the most innovative feature of the institute was that we had more students as facilitators than staff. We wanted to ‘walk the talk’ in the way we ran the institute and not simply have staff talking about working with students. We ensured that the students ran the first parts of most of the sessions, which sent a powerful message about the importance and feasibility of the students as partners approach.

National partnership institutes have been run before in the UK by the HE Academy and a parallel one ran in Australia in 2015/16 organized by the Office for Learning and Teaching. However, as far as we are aware, this was the first international institute to focus on students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education and to be run by students as well as staff. An international summer school on students as partners ran for a few years in Cambridge, organized by Alison Cook-Sather, but it was primarily for staff and was as much about school education as it was higher education.

The institute had two tracks. Delegates were invited to participate as individuals or partners in up to two, two-day workshops from a choice of four, or could come as part of a team of four to six, with a minimum of two students and two staff, and spend three days working on a relevant project as part of a ‘Change Institute’. The latter ran along similar lines to the Change Academy initiative run by the HE Academy and others (Bradford 2009; Healey et al. 2013), with teams working part of the time alongside each other on various facilitated exercises about implementing change (e.g. a ‘rich picture’ task designed to help crystallize and visualize project goals; an action planning exercise that helped participants identify and prioritize ideas for moving their initiative forward), and working on their own projects the rest of the time. Team projects encompassed a range of student-staff partnership initiatives. One group worked to refine and enhance a program wherein students serve as pedagogical consultants to faculty, for instance, while another sought to develop a plan to integrate a range of student engagement initiatives in place at their institution. Each team was mentored by a student and a staff consultant. The program for the two tracks, along with descriptions of the projects teams were developing in the change institute, can be seen at https://macblog.mcmaster.ca/summer-institute/.

Nearly 100 delegates from seven different countries (Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Netherlands, Sweden, UK, US) participated in the event. Approximately half were students. About two-thirds attended one or more of the workshops, while seven teams with 3–7 members from five different countries participated in the Change Institute. There were 13 facilitators, 8 of whom were students or recent alumni, plus a student manager/researcher.

Methodology

Much like the institute broadly, the present study aimed to enact partnership, and thus was designed and conducted by a student and two staff working collaboratively. This decision reflected the common finding that partnerships between students and staff benefit not only the individuals involved but also the work undertaken by virtue of bringing multiple perspectives to bear on issues of relevance to teaching and learning (e.g. Healey et al. 2013). Given our focus on student-staff partnership, it seemed particularly important to have both student and staff voices involved in all phases of the research, from research design through data collection, analysis and dissemination.

The project was guided by two central research questions:

1. What are SI participants’ experiences of student-staff partnership both within and beyond the SI?

2. To what extent do they perceive the SI to support their developing partnership work?

Because these questions focus on understanding participants’ experiences and perspectives, and align with an interpretive paradigm that views social realities as multiple and constructed, we took a qualitative approach to data collection (Merriam 2009). In particular, focus groups were selected as a primary data collection method, as these have the potential to generate rich data that foreground participants’ interests (rather than researchers’ pre-conceptions) and allow participants to co-construct knowledge in ways that reflect dialogic and interactive processes of meaning-making in everyday life (Barbour 2007; Kosny 2003). At the same time, because focus groups involve limited numbers of participants, and may be dominated by strong voices or make it challenging for people to discuss sensitive issues (Fontana and Frey 2000; though see Barbour 2007 for a counterargument), we elected to supplement this method with individual reflective responses completed by participants at the end of each day of the SI. Reflection has been positioned as a significant way of helping people navigate the process of participating in student-staff partnership (e.g. Cook-Sather 2014; Mercer-Mapstone, Marquis, and McConnell forthcoming), and has also been used as a means of exploring individuals’ experiences of partnership in previous research (Marquis et al. 2016). Because all participants would be responding to reflective prompts as part of the SI, drawing on these responses (where participants gave consent) also allowed us to access a wider variety of perspectives and experiences, increasing the internal generalizability of the data (i.e. the likelihood that the data speak to the experiences of the full group of SI attendees) (Maxwell and Chmiel 2014). By drawing on individual reflective responses in addition to collaboratively constructed focus group data, then, we hoped to get a rich picture of the experiences and perceptions at the center of our research questions.

After receiving clearance from the research ethics board at the principal investigator’s university, the student researcher sent out an email inviting all registered institute participants to take part in the study. The letter of information was attached to this email, and provided participants with full details about the project and its objectives. We provided additional opportunities for participants to sign up by handing out the letter of information at the registration table.

There were separate focus groups for students and staff, as we wanted to maintain an open and comfortable space for participants. Each focus group involved a semi-structured discussion based on guiding questions, facilitated by the student investigator or another trained researcher. Ultimately, 10 staff participants (of 51) and 5 student participants (of 46) chose to take part in a focus group. One session contained only 1 student participant (and was thus effectively an interview), but all other focus groups involved 3–4 participants each. Participants hailed from 4 of the 7 countries represented at the institute, and included individuals who took part in both the workshop and the change institute streams. They indicated a range of prior experience with student-staff partnership, from being new to the process to having several years’ experience with this work.

As noted above, participants were also asked to complete reflective prompts about their experiences with the SI and their developing understanding of student-staff partnerships. The prompts were part of the sessions themselves, but participants also had the option to consent to the use of their responses in the research. These anonymous reflections were completed online or on paper, depending on the participant’s preference. Of 284 possible responses, we were granted permission to analyse 191 for the purposes of the research (83 from students, 95 from staff, and 13 from participants who did not indicate their role or identified as both student and staff). As such, the findings reported below draw from data collected from the majority of institute participants.

Following data collection, focus group recordings and handwritten prompts were transcribed verbatim for analysis. The first and second authors then analysed these data using a form of qualitative analysis based on constant comparison (Merriam 2009). We selected one transcript with which to begin, and each open coded it independently, noting key ideas that resonated with our research questions. We subsequently compared our coding, discussing and coming to consensus about points of discrepancy and collapsing and grouping ideas into larger categories as appropriate. Once we were both satisfied with this preliminary code structure, we divided the remaining data, each coding one half of the outstanding transcripts and prompt responses. Additional points were added to the code tree as necessary, and discussed. Finally, we returned to the data, each checking the coding that the other had completed, and raising points of uncertainty or disagreement.

Findings

Throughout the study, participants described a number of benefits that they perceived to attach to student-staff partnerships. Many of these, including the potential for partnership to contribute to personal and professional growth, to lead to enhanced work by integrating diverse perspectives, to develop new and enhanced relationships between students and staff, and to begin to chip away at problematic power structures, resonate with similar benefits described in the literature (e.g. Cook-Sather, Bovill, and Felten 2014; Healey, Flint, and Harrington 2014). While we do not wish to underplay the significance of these benefits or their prominence in participants’ thinking, the fact that they overlap with existing scholarship, and that partnership research in general has often paid more attention to benefits than to challenges (Bovill et al. 2016), discouraged us from focusing on these benefits in this article. Instead, we discuss below some of the key themes that arose from the data in relation to participants’ perceptions of the challenges of partnership and the potential for the Summer Institute to support them in this difficult, but rewarding work.

Challenges of partnership

There were several challenges posed by participants concerning students as partners, as they reflected on their experiences and understandings of this subject. For example, participants mentioned two major deterrents for implementing partnerships: time and funding. Given the time needed to establish a functional and trusting relationship, as well as develop and carry out a project, partnerships take a significant portion of partners’ time and energy. Many participants likewise recorded that funding for partnership projects can pose a problem, particularly if students are to be paid for their work. As well, some noted that ‘students as partners’ is a difficult and complex term to define. Many participants stated that their idea of the concept had changed over time, and some observed that it can be applied specifically to particular collaborations or broadly as a cultural mindset. As such, the term itself became difficult to describe concretely. Finally, several participants highlighted concerns about the relative inclusivity of partnership initiatives. With a large student population, many participants reported that it is difficult to engage meaningfully with all students. Student partnerships are often with students who are the top of their class and participate frequently. These are often the students who come from more privileged backgrounds and, as such, do not represent the entire student population. While these issues were commonly reported, we describe below the most pervasive challenges that participants identified.

Implementation and institutionalization

Many participants engaged willingly with the idea of students as partners, but discussed the crucial issue of implementation. Theoretical discussions about creating partnerships came into conflict with the uncertainty of implementing these projects. In particular, the concept of buy-in and influencing others at their institutions rose to the forefront of participants’ reflections. While it appeared that the idea itself was simple and/or appealing, thinking about putting it into action was intimidating. Changing the existing climate is a daunting and seemingly impossible task, especially without the aid of colleagues:

In a ‘top down’ institution how can I influence culture as a mere mortal[?] (Staff, Reflective Prompt)

In addition to struggling with translating the concept of partnership into practice, some noted that sustaining this change creates additional difficulties. A partnership itself may end once a student graduates, or the culture may not be upheld in the absence of a champion. One participant noted the difficulty of institutionalizing and sustaining partnerships beyond individual efforts:

How can we move from small pockets or partnerships toward institutional shifts and engagement? As a student engaging deeply in partnership how do we ensure our project and visions are continued after we leave? (Student, Reflective Prompt)

As such quotations suggest, participants were uncertain about how to maintain a partnership program and mentality within the university, especially with the high turnover rate of students. Such implementation challenges were seen as especially daunting if institutional cultures were perceived to be inhospitable to partnership. Some reported that their institutions were looking to protect traditional roles and would not be open to changing the hierarchies already established.

Navigating power structures

As indicated by the mention of institutional culture above, the issue of power was positioned as a prevalent challenge for many participants. There is a hierarchy within the university setting, especially between staff and students:

If it’s something like professor and student or something where one party typically has a superior role and one person has an inferior role or whatever it is, it can be hard to get out of those roles and truly be equal or whatever your goal is in contribution towards this partnership. It can be hard to let go of what you’re kind of inherently used to (Student, Focus Group)

Even when individuals are willing to step outside of these pre-existing roles, the unfamiliarity of the process can create uncertainties about how to act. For example, some faculty members described having trouble deciding when to lead and when to fall back to let their partner take on more responsibility. Particularly in larger groups, participants noticed that they looked to the faculty member as the leader, causing the implicit power structure to remain. This situation occurred especially if the leader was a staff member who was responsible for the outcome of the project:

One of the biggest challenges for me here has been actually leading a partnership project. So instead of being a partner in a partnership project, I am leading the partnership project because that means I’m responsible for the outcomes. (Staff, Focus Group)

When working towards partnerships, participants reported that they had held previous beliefs regarding their partners. When they challenged their assumptions, they were left with a newfound respect and understanding of the other’s experience. However, they also noted that there are many who do not value challenging these preconceptions and thus these people perpetuate the stereotypes of the other partner’s experience:

Some faculty think, ‘well what could students possibly know about teaching and learning?’ […] ‘They don’t do it.’ And, of course, they do it all the time, you know but … people don’t think about it that way. […] It’s connected to your point about roles. ‘I’m in this role so I know how to do this … and nobody else could possibly know anything about it that would be useful to me,’ is a kind of assumption that some people have. (Staff, Focus Group)

The challenges associated with power are complex and intertwined with many other issues. Deconstructing an already established structure requires trust and commitment, which is difficult in a limited amount of time. Indeed, some participants questioned whether it is possible to fully challenge existing hierarchies, particularly when they are so normalized that we can be blind to their operations.

Personal and interpersonal factors

To address some of the previous challenges, such as implementation and navigating power structures, many participants reported the importance of communication. This skill let them share their new perspectives and ideas with each other and further their own understanding. However, communication itself was not always seen to be easy. Some noted, for example, that within a diverse group, many different perspectives can emerge, leading to complications. Such communication challenges were even described occurring within the context of the institute itself:

Sometimes communication was a bit of a struggle because everybody has their own way of formulating their opinions and everybody has their own perspectives. And at times we found that we were all formulating our opinions but we weren’t actively listening to each other even though most of our opinions all had things in common. (Student, Focus Group)

Furthermore, developing a shared goal between all partners can prove to be a difficult task. Participants mentioned that the increased number of perspectives and varied experiences, while providing rich information, can also complicate the process of establishing common objectives. One staff member indicated that a main difficulty for their group during the change institute had been ‘reaching common expectations and goals’ (Reflective prompt), for instance, while a student described challenges ‘engaging with different possibilities for outcomes’ (Reflective prompt).

Participants likewise explained how, while they valued new information and perspectives, the level of energy and effort they had to put into their projects was often draining. Direct conflict, along with the extra effort of a project and resistance from an institution, made some participants feel exhausted:

on an interpersonal level the partnerships can be a little taxing when you are confronted with like direct conflict … or you’re working with someone who doesn’t really want to change. (Student, Focus Group)

For this participant, such emotional difficulty could lead to feeling de-motivated and burned out at times. Similarly, prioritizing many different opportunities and projects can be difficult, and participants noted their need for more time to accomplish these undertakings.

Experiences of the summer institute

In both focus groups and reflective responses, participants described a number of features of the summer institute that resonated with and, in some cases, helped to address the challenges discussed above. Four of the most common themes from the data are presented here.

Collaboration and community

One of the themes emerging most strongly was the idea that institute participants valued feeling like part of a growing community invested in partnership work. This sense of community was positioned as beneficial in and of itself, but also in ways that suggested it might help to counter some of the challenges of partnership participants described. Many people reported that they appreciated learning how others had negotiated and navigated the difficulties of implementing partnership initiatives, for instance, and indicated that they had received supportive critical feedback from others that would help them enhance their own work. Some also pointed out that connecting and collaborating with others from around the world would enable them to provide evidence and examples that might help them counter resistance when they returned to their home campuses. More broadly, many argued that the process of connecting with this larger partnership community also provided emotional support and encouragement to continue with this challenging work, creating a sense of shared purpose and possibility:

I found this experience a bit comforting in the sense that I became aware of how many resources and people are available to provide guidance, advice and encouragement. (Student, Reflective Prompt)

… for me it’s always great to know that you’re not the only one working on this. Cause sometimes it does seem really […] taxing and tiring […] to be working against like institutions that don’t really, you know, see the value in it. So when you look around and see it’s a collective effort that’s also international, it’s really great. (Student, Focus Group)

… that sort of gives me confidence. Hey, others have succeeded, we can too! […] So it’s […] feeling part of a community and some kind of collegial idea that [this] has been happening somewhere else in the world and can happen on my part of the ocean too. (Staff, Focus Group)

While networking and exchange are typically valuable for professional development, such comments suggest they might be particularly vital for those endeavoring to engage in and support student-staff partnerships. Indeed, a few participants indicated that they would have appreciated even more opportunities at the institute to connect meaningfully with others, and to work, as one participant put it, to ‘really create a network’ (Staff, Reflective Prompt). In light of the considerable difficulties and uncertainties of partnership work, this desire to learn from and feel supported by others is understandable and significant.

New ideas and understandings

Related to the point about learning from others above, many participants also emphasized that the summer institute exposed them to a range of valuable new ideas about partnership work, what it might look like, and how it might be implemented. In some cases, this was expressed in ways that suggested the institute not only presented participants with new models and perspectives, but also promoted reflection that ultimately shifted their understanding of what partnership entails or of their own partnership efforts. For some, this re-evaluation seemed to be connected specifically to engaging more concretely with the challenges and complexities of student-staff collaboration:

… it’s helped me to reflect [on] what I thought partnership was when I arrived. I thought it was much more straightforward than I think now, two days in. I think that there is complexity and dynamics […] that can’t be ignored. I think you [need] to talk about it as being more open and transparent. So it’s challenged me too in my assumptions. (Staff, Focus Group)

It helps me to rethink about the power relationship problem between me and my faculty partner. (Student, Reflective Prompt)

For others, this type of metacognitive thinking was framed more broadly:

What’s really helpful for me is to get out of the daily, yearly work of running a program like this and have people ask me questions like this, you know, which nobody ever asks me at home. […] it’s so great when I have to stop and say oh, you know, what am I doing? And how could I grow, and what could the next step be? (Staff, Focus Group)

In addition to simply providing new models and generating ideas, the summer institute seems to have offered some participants a valuable space for reflection on their existing perspectives and practices. Such reflective thinking, particularly when it prompts individuals to contemplate the ways in which they’re broaching and navigating the challenges of partnership, has the potential to support this work by surfacing assumptions and promoting more informed action (Cook-Sather 2014).

Practical project support

Another issue foregrounded as particularly beneficial by participants was the fact that the institute provided them with time, space, and tools to advance their thinking about implementing partnership projects on their home campuses. Just as many people expressed particular concerns and uncertainties about how to translate some of the ideals of partnership into effective and sustainable practice (especially within inhospitable institutional cultures), so too did participants highlight the value of support and activities that helped them answer these practical questions:

I came with an idea and a start to collaborating with students as partners in teaching and learning … and now at the end of day 2 I have an actual plan which I will take back to my Faculty and implement! (Staff, Reflective Prompt)

[The institute] was extremely effective in assisting us to bring down the broad and philosophical ideas of our project to items that are actionable. The activities were crucial to the success we have experienced in the past few days. (Student, Reflective Prompt)

[Our project] has become more concrete. I think that’s sort of the main gain of this three days. We have managed to break it down into bits and pieces that are more [manageable] and understandable for both the students and [staff]. I think in the beginning there was some totally different perspectives so it was hard to understand where do we meet. […] Even if we did agree from the beginning [about] the vision […], it was hard to understand what would this mean in action. And now we do have an action plan. (Staff, Focus Group)

Alongside particular activities such as a ‘pitch exercise’ and a ‘theory of change’ planning session, a major factor highlighted as relevant to this practical support was simply dedicated time, away from home responsibilities, to work closely with other staff and student participants and facilitators on realizing ideas. As one student participant put it,

Being in the same space with the same goal for three days really forced [us] to focus on the project. The workshops and discussions with others were very helpful prompts. (Student, Reflective Prompt).

Given the challenges participants expressed elsewhere with moving from ideas to implementation, such time and support was seen as invaluable.

Realization of partnership

In addition to the value of time and support that assisted with practical implementation, participants also emphasized the significance of having an opportunity to practice partnership and experience its benefits and challenges first hand. Individuals participating in the Change Institute, for instance, suggested that the process pushed them to navigate common aspects of partnership work, such as attempting to develop shared goals, establishing trust, and working to communicate and negotiate effectively across roles – in some cases for the first time. Some suggested this process went smoothly, while others described struggling with many of the challenges that were connected to partnership more broadly:

The institute allowed us to practice the process of partnership for the first time and so we went through different stages of partnership with all its passions and potentials. Through facilitation we did reach some of the goals of the project. (Staff, Reflective Prompt)

We are building trust every day and learning how to communicate honestly and effectively. We are increasingly seeing the importance in trust and honesty and this is letting us progressively all be responsible for stating our opinions and contributing our parts to the workshop (Staff/Student [not identified], Reflective Prompt)

The question was how do you develop trust? […] You can’t just say ‘we’ll trust each other’ and that can actually happen, so I feel like this has really helped for the students and the faculty members to trust each other more and trust each other’s ideas and things like that. (Student, Focus Group).

Such quotations emphasize the potential value of providing people with the opportunity to attempt to enact partnership, in all its complexities, in a supportive space. This kind of focused practice, or ‘trial run’, as one participant (Staff, Focus Group) called it, led many at the summer institute to report feeling like their immediate partnership relationships had strengthened and/or they personally were better equipped to work in partnership.

Beyond providing opportunities to work closely in partnership themselves, a few participants also emphasized that the institute served broadly to model and exemplify the possibilities of collaborative, reciprocal relationships between students and staff. A student workshop participant, for example, noted that it was often difficult to distinguish between staff and student delegates at the institute, suggesting that they hadn’t experienced the hierarchy that typically holds in academic contexts as a result. Similarly, a change institute delegate commented, ‘I really liked it was so student driven here because you really lived what you were saying. […] That makes it very sort of believable and trustworthy’ (Staff, Focus Group). Comments such as these, though admittedly rare, indicate the institute not only created a context for people to work through and experience partnership, but also modeled collegial collaboration in ways that further enhanced some people’s confidence that partnership is actually possible and desirable.

Discussion

As many have noted, the concept of students as partners holds enormous potential and can lead to substantial benefits for both students and staff. Nevertheless, the present findings underscore how challenging and uncertain this work can be, and thus offer further support for claims that the time has come for more sustained attention to navigating the difficulties of partnership (e.g. Bovill et al. 2016). Of course, given the breadth of students as partners work and the wide range of activities that might be included under this mantle, it is challenging to offer any broad generalizations about the difficulties it entails and how these might best be approached. Even within the present study, participants’ reflections were inevitably influenced by the form of partnership they have experienced and the context in which it occurred. It might also be the case that institute attendees – our focus in the present study – differ appreciably from others engaged in student-staff partnership; for example, they might be particularly invested in or committed to such work. That said, the fact that a number of shared themes arose within data drawn from a wide range of students and staff undertaking different kinds of partnership activity within diverse institutional and national contexts suggests these themes might be particularly worthy of further consideration.

Echoing other research, for example, participants in the present study foregrounded problems navigating existing hierarchies and power structures, working within resistant institutional cultures, and responding to shortages of time and money. Some also raised significant questions about the relative inclusivity of partnership initiatives, worrying about the potential for partnership to become restrictive and elitist and thus undercut its own democratic potential. That such concerns, which are relatively common in the literature (e.g. Bovill et al. 2016; Felten et al. 2013), also surfaced in our data reiterates their centrality to students as partners efforts. At the same time, participants in the current study also emphasized a number of challenges that have not yet received much scholarly attention, including the interpersonal and emotional strains that can arise during collaboration, and the immediate problem of determining how to translate partnership ideals into effective practice. These challenges speak interestingly to the concerns and experiences of individuals attempting to engage and develop such work ‘on the ground’.

In several respects, the international summer institute described in this article seems to have been perceived as a useful support that helps individuals respond to some of these challenges. Of course, one four-day event is not a panacea, and many of the issues mentioned above (e.g. culture change and navigating hierarchies) will require multiple, long-term efforts to address them meaningfully. It is also true, as Curran and Millard (2016) note, that different contexts and situations may require different strategies for support. We highlight key elements foregrounded by participants here, however, as potentially productive strategies that might be adapted and applied in a range of contexts. The aim is less to evaluate the success of the summer institute itself, and more to tease out key features brought to bear within this initiative that might be valuable for supporting student-staff partnerships more broadly.

Along these lines, participants commonly noted how the dedicated time and space afforded by the institute and the opportunities it provided to connect with others engaged in partnership helped them work through concerns around implementation, reflect on their practices, and gather ideas and evidence that they could take back to their home institutions. Community figured especially significantly in their reflections, offering not only a source of new ideas but also inspiration and emotional support that was seen as a partial salve to the stresses of attempting difficult and complicated work. The opportunity to experience and practice partnership within the context of the institute was also highlighted, both for how it offered a chance to grow relationships and navigate challenges within a supportive context and for how it reiterated for some the possibility and value of meaningful student-staff collaboration. Alongside factors such as encouraging reflection and small steps toward change (Bovill, Cook-Sather, and Felten 2011; Cook-Sather 2014), and embedding partnership in institutional documents and reward processes (Curran and Millard 2016), these may be important considerations for developing students as partners work while recognizing the challenges it entails.

Drawing from these findings, other initiatives seeking to enhance student-staff partnerships in learning and teaching might aim to balance the development of community with practical support around project implementation, perhaps drawing from community of practice or faculty learning community models that engage cohorts of participants in both advancing particular initiatives and developing supportive relationships (e.g. Cox 2003; Matthews, Marquis, and Healey 2016). Significantly, both students and staff should be actively involved in such initiatives, working together as both participants and facilitators. This modeling of partnership not only makes conceptual sense when working to develop student-staff collaboration, but can also provide an opportunity to increase confidence in the potential of partnership and offer an opportunity to experience and work through challenges, as suggested by our data. Finally, given that institute participants spoke appreciatively of the opportunity to connect with and learn from people from a wide variety of contexts, efforts to expand the community of people engaged in partnership activities beyond a single institution seem merited. In the present study, participants highlighted how connecting with a broader community not only increased their sense of motivation and support and offered them a wider range of ideas, but also provided them potential evidence and examples they could use to leverage partnership at their own institutions. In this respect, the present findings echo work about engaging external voices as part of efforts to develop the scholarship of teaching and learning on university campuses (Ginsberg and Bernstein 2012).

The idea of building inter-institutional communities also points to the potential significance of considering further the opportunities and challenges of international work to support student-staff partnership. In the present study, the international nature of the summer institute was positioned as a key contributor to the value of the community that developed. Nevertheless, a few participants argued that further attention to the different cultural contexts in which attendees worked would have been valuable, both in terms of unpacking the elements of partnership that may be culturally specific (though commonly discussed as universal) and in terms of providing further opportunities to learn from others’ diverse experiences. Such comments resonate with a study by Pounder, Ho Hung-lam, and Groves (2016), who illustrate additional concerns about power, for instance, that might play out when partnership is engaged in post-colonial contexts. Given this range of findings, international efforts to develop student-staff partnerships would likely benefit from efforts to engage questions of culture more actively, seeking to avoid both universalism and relativism by fostering open discussion and exchange about contextual specificities. That said, further research on this question, as on students as partners within diverse national contexts more generally, is required.

In light of ideas emerging from our findings, then, we advocate future research that investigates the role of different institutional and regional contexts in shaping experiences of and support for student-staff partnership. Similarly, since the present data were collected during the timeframe of the SI itself, follow up research investigating participants’ experiences and perceptions of partnership as they return to their campuses and attempt to advance this work (or not) is also merited.

Conclusion

In response to the generally celebratory thrust of the students as partners literature, the present study has emphasized challenges experienced by students and staff working collaboratively in a range of countries and contexts, and considered ways in which their perceptions of an international summer institute might speak to means of supporting partnership work. While participants’ comments about the institute were largely positive, and we thus intend to run it again, we do not intend for this article to merely acclaim the potential of this particular initiative. Rather, we draw from participants’ experiences to emphasize key considerations, including the development of community, the need for practical support with implementation, and the significance of modeling and practicing partnership, that might inform future development initiatives and research.

Disclosure statement

As indicated in the article, the authors are/were organizers and facilitators of the Summer Institute discussed.

ORCID

Elizabeth Marquis http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7362-678X

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [611-2015-0425].