Fostering the instructor-student collaborative partnership in China’s higher education: A three-iterative action research

ABSTRACT

The instructor-student collaborative partnership has potential to transform education from a traditional, instructor-directed teaching to an active student-centred learning. However, it is not easy to promote the instructor-student collaborative partnership in the Eastern education contexts like China, due to the didactic, instructor-directed, centrally-organised educational structure. The current research conducts a three-iterative action research to practice and investigate the instructor-student collaborative partnership in China’s higher education. The instructor uses and modifies pedagogical strategies to foster the instructor-student collaborative partnership iteratively in three graduate-level courses. Furthermore, a qualitative research method is used to investigate the collaborative partnership across three courses. Results indicate a gradual development of the superficial, medium and high levels of the instructor-student collaborative partnership across three courses. Based on the results, this research provides conceptual, analytical and pedagogical implications that are beneficial to understand and foster the instructor-student collaborative partnership in higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• The instructor-student collaborative partnership
• action research
• student-centred learning
• higher education
• collaboration

Disclosure statement

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

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2023.2276236

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Year 2023), Zhejiang University, China as well as Zhejiang University graduate education research project (20220310).

Notes on contributors

Fan Ouyang

Fan Ouyang is a research professor at College of Education, Zhejiang University. Her research interests are computer-supported collaborative learning, learning analytics and educational data mining, artificial intelligence in education.