Drivers for students as partners in HE

As outlined in chapter 1, the marketisation of HE has encouraged students to adopt a passive role in their learning where HE is viewed as a commodity and a ‘student as consumer’ attitude prevails. Many scholars (for example: Bryson, 2014a; Bryson, 2014b; Levy, Little and Whelan, 2011; Matthews, 2016; McCulloch, 2009) now feel that the time has come to challenge this paradigm and to move away from hierarchical university structures that encourage a ‘them and us’ attitude, to more collaborative approaches where staff and students work together for the mutual benefit of both, in pursuit of deep learning. However, Macfarlane (2017) cautions that students’ rights shouldn’t be undermined in our rush to improve the student experience. He believes that students should have the right to choose and have the freedom to learn rather than having things imposed on them that they do not want.

Kreber (2009) suggests that governments’ call on universities to compete in the global market and to provide ‘knowledge workers’, global citizens and lifelong learners might cause some academics to question their roles. Rather than reduce the purpose of a degree to preparing students for specific jobs, a more desirable perspective according to Knight and Yorke (2003) is to think of employability in relation to student capacity building to think and act

critically, ethically and morally in different contexts. Northedge and McArthur (2009) argue that the art of teaching is expanding and the ‘learner-teacher relationship of some kind always lies at the heart of effective higher

of not only a cognitive process but also a socio-cultural one, dependent on meetings of minds and on relationship…’ (p107). Baxter Magolda (2009) believes that students need to move away from authority dependence towards self authorship and that this is a challenge for twenty-first century higher education. Her Learning Partnership Model offers a vision for engaging students through three principles: ‘validating learners’ ability to know, situating learning in learners’ experience, and defining learning as mutually constructing meaning’ (Baxter Magolda, 2009, p150) and she believes that achieving this requires ‘educators to re-conceptualise the educator-learner relationship’ (p155).

Working collaboratively is of course, not new, and we are reminded that the idea of a university with a community of learners (staff and students) working together to advance scholarship was the vision put forward by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1810 when he founded the University of Berlin (Lea, 2016; Levy, Little and Whelan, 2011). At Ulster, there are approaches that have involved students as partners for many years, such as problem-based learning (Hack, McKillop, Sweetman, & McCormack, 2015) and peer-assisted study sessions (Keenan, 2014) but these have mainly been instigated and led at a local subject or programme level. Opportunities to replicate this across the institution have not been explored. More recently, research is emerging which extols the virtues of the ‘students as partners’ paradigm. The benefits for staff and students can be summarised as:

 Focuses on the development of the learner leading to improved citizens (McCulloch, 2009);

 Enhances motivation and learning (Cook-Sather, Bovill and Felten, 2014; Little et al., 2011; Nygaard et al., 2013);

 Develops metacognitive awareness and sense of identity (Cook- Sather, Bovill and Felten, 2014; Dickerson, Jarvis and Stockwell, 2016; Nygaard et al., 2013);

 improves teaching and the classroom experience – prompting a

learning community (Cook-Sather, Bovill and Felten, 2014, Nygaard et al., 2013);

 Improved learning in relation to employability skills and graduate attributes (Dickerson, Jarvis and Stockwell, 2016; Pauli, Raymond- Barker and Worrell, 2016);

However, whilst this research highlights the outcomes of partnership working in a positive light, it is important to acknowledge the challenges that this type of working presents. It is clear that genuine partnerships do not happen automatically and questions still remain – particularly if we wish to scale up partnership working across an institution. To date, scholars have identified some of the challenges and further questions which include:

 How can we reconcile power relations between staff and students when we are working in a dominant ‘students as consumer’ ideology? (Delpish et al., 2009; Hutchings, Bartholomew and Reilly, 2013; Levy, Little and Whelan, 2011);

 Transience (both staff and students) can be a barrier as partners move on (Little et al., 2011; Levy, Little and Whelan, 2011);

 Finding a common language (Cook-Sather, Bovill and Felten, 2014; Levy, Little and Whelan, 2011);

 ‘Students as partners’ can be a threshold concept (Cook-Sather, 2014; Marquis et al. 2016);

 The complexity of students as partners in different contexts means there is no ‘one size fits all’ (Cook-Sather, Bovill and Felten, 2014).

Interestingly, where challenges have been identified, these have been

accompanied with advice and guidance on how they might be addressed. In relation to power dynamics, it is suggested that staff student partnerships do not require false equivalency nor should we reverse the balance of power in the students’ favour, rather we should seek to ensure that different

perspectives and contributions are made by all partners and that each is valued and respected (Barnes et al., 2011; Cook-Sather, Bovill and Felten, 2014). Jarvis et al. agree and advocate that ‘dealing with power differentials so that all can take initiative and responsibility is vital’ (2016, p9). This study will seek to explore some of the practicalities of these broad aspirations (further discussed in Chapter 3).

Despite and in recognition of the challenges, there is a growing movement across the HE sector to capitalise on the benefits of staff and student partnership in order to fully realise what some claim is the potential

transformative nature of a culture change to challenge the customer-provider model of HE. As Levy, Little and Whelan (2011) point out, rather than idealise the concept of partnership, we should accept that HE is a contested arena and ‘by working together in ways that allow staff and students to share authority in learning, teaching, research and enhancement, new knowledge and practices will emerge through contestation as well as collaboration’ (p12).