Pedagogical Partnerships

Abstract

Faculty, Students, and Academic Developers in Higher Education as the inaugural publication in the Center for Engaged Learning Open Access Book Series. Alison Cook-Sather, Melanie Bahti, and Anita Ntem present research-informed practices for establishing and sustaining pedagogical partnerships focused on classrooms and curricula. This integration of theory, research, and practice will continue to be a hallmark of the series, which provides an alternate publishing option for high-quality engaged learning books that align with the Center's mission, goals, and initiatives, and that experiment with genre or medium in ways that take advantage of an online and open access format. Internationally, higher education discussions about pedagogical partnership, also known as students-as-partners or student-faculty/ student-staff partnership, have steadily increased over the past decade. Pedagogical partnership is examined in dedicated journals and in other scholarly teaching and scholarship of teaching and learning publications. With this book, though, Cook-Sather, Bahti, and Ntem offer the unique contribution of a how-to guide that addresses how to enact pedagogical partnership in systematic and equitable ways. At the same time, they acknowledge the challenges of this often countercultural work and share practically focused strategies for building pedagogical partnership programs. Pedagogical Partnerships explicitly speaks to faculty, students, program directors, and academic developers, among others, and it draws examples from diverse institutions across the globe. With this rich array of examples and careful consideration for readers' own institutional contexts, the xii | PEDAGOGICAL PARTNERSHIPS authors avoid being prescriptive in their strategies for partnership. As a result, readers will be able to adapt the authors' strategies for a range of institution types and budgets. The how-to guide also models partnership; two of the three authors are recently graduated students. Throughout the book, the authors share glimpses into their own partnerships. Notably, Pedagogical Partnerships is not merely a stand-alone, open access book. The authors also created nearly three dozen supplemental resources that are referenced in the book (and linked in the online version) and shared on the book's website. These resources extend the descriptive nature of this how-to guide, illustrating many of the strategies the authors describe or offering additional opportunities for readers to reflect on how these pedagogical partnerships could be enacted in their own contexts. We are grateful to Alison, Melanie, and Anita for authoring such a dynamic book to initiate the Center for Engaged Learning Open Access Book Series, and we are confident that you will find many helpful takeaways in this accessible how-to guide. We encourage you to bookmark the Pedagogical Partnerships website for quick reference as you (re)design your own classroom and curricular partnerships and to share this book and its resources widely.

Two tales of the Design Thinking Process for the Sustainable Energy Canadian Engineering Grand Challenge

“…These partnerships can take on multiple formats and faculty can play different roles ranging from an instructor (information dispenser), facilitator (process guide) and consultant (subject matter expert). Stepping away from the instructor role and taking on the role of a facilitator allows faculty members to share knowledge and perspectives with students (6). It also offers the opportunity to observe students brainstorming and scoping out their problem statements.…”

“…It also offers the opportunity to observe students brainstorming and scoping out their problem statements. Inspirations from these observations can lead faculty members to develop open ended activities in their classroom to stimulate student engagement (6).…”

While We Are Here: Resisting Hegemony and Fostering Inclusion through Rhizomatic Growth via Student–Faculty Pedagogical Partnership

“…Matches between student and faculty partners are made almost entirely based on schedules. Students participate in an orientation, are given guidelines, and are supported in weekly meetings with me in my role as director of the program, but there is no additional training [15]. The program was initially created in response to faculty requests for support in making their classrooms more inclusive and responsive and has retained that commitment [6].…”

“…The sections of their dialogic narrative-"Roots and shoots finding their ways", "Strengthening root clusters and creating new nodes for shoot development", and "Pursuing paths representing 'parallel states of becoming'"-retrospectively map the initially challenging-or "troublesome," in the language Meyer and Land [9] and Gravett [13] use-and ultimately empowering transitions each experienced through their pedagogical partnership. This is one story of a pedagogical partnership; there are general guidelines available for developing this kind of work [15], but each partnership is unique, so Alexis and Jamie focus on their individual experiences rather than on generalized structures and approaches to be replicated.…”

“…They can be department or division based, or they might be taken up by individuals who reconceptualize existing roles such as teaching assistant or repurpose funds for research to support pedagogical partnerships. For detailed guidelines regarding developing and launching a partnership program, see Pedagogical Partnerships: A How-to Guide for Faculty, Students, and Academic Developers in Higher Education [15]. For an argument regarding how pedagogical partnership, whether individual or institutional, can explicitly redress epistemic, affective, and ontological harms caused by postsecondary institutions' hegemonic structures and practices, see Promoting Equity and Justice through Pedagogical Partnership [46].…”