Recognizing students’ expertise and insights in expanding forms of academic writing and publishing about learning and teaching

Few studies have explored student perceptions of participating in STEM multidisciplinary students-as-partners (SaP) projects integrated into the curriculum. We conducted content analysis on focus groups to determine partner perceptions of a STEM and liberal arts SaP project and used a mixed methods concurrent triangulation design to explore the degree to which partners thought the underpinning SaP values had been enacted. Four staff and seven students participated in the study. Perceptions of the project were aligned to four themes: outstanding student experience, development of student employability skills, a transformative change in the student-to-staff relationship, and barriers to success and enabling strategies. Qualitative and quantitative data indicated strong inclusion of the partnership values. This paper provides new insights into STEM and liberal arts SaP projects, indicating they may be well-suited to the embodiment of the underpinning SaP values, and help students prepare for the world of work.

Section: Researchersmentioning

confidence: 99%

A multidisciplinary STEM and liberal arts students-as-partners project promoted the development of employability skills and embodied partnership values

Lexis,

Julien,

Loch

et al. 2023

“…curriculum development, capstone, mental health, teaching, flexible learning COVID-19 reminded researchers to consider the students' role in curriculum (Gravett et al, 2020;Cook-Sather et al, 2021). Like many in higher education, our university shifted quickly to online instruction while striving to maintain high-quality student experiences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Equalizing student and teacher: Using COVID-19 to (re)imagine curriculum

Adams,

Gaines,

Vasquez

et al. 2023

COVID-19 created an opportunity to (re)envision students as partners in curriculum development and the curriculum process. Understanding the design and delivery of courses as a flattened hierarchy, particularly with graduate students as partners, is the focus of this study. This article reports findings from research undertaken collaboratively with students as partners in developing a new approach for conducting a capstone course and project. This research was enacted at a research-intensive university in the United States in 2020 and 2021. We describe the need for the shift in stance to students as partners in our institution as well as what the findings indicate as imperatives for teachers in both K–12 settings and institutions of higher education. The findings indicate how teachers’ mental health and experiences of stress were affected by specific attributes of the pandemic and pandemic teaching (which aligns with the majority of COVID-19 research in education), as well as how some learned to cope with these demands. Findings also indicate the need for flexibility in all learning environments.

“…This expertise is based in part on students' experiences as students. It is also informed by unique intersections of socio-cultural identities and lived experiences that students bring to educational contexts and analyses (Brown et al, 2020;Cook-Sather et al, 2021;Doktor et al, 2019;Matthews, 2017) and by students' engagement in sense-making about their identities and life experiences. As pedagogical partnership work expands around the globe, I am seeing undergraduate students at my own and other institutions develop another form of expertise: in pedagogical partnership work itself.I embarked on developing student-faculty pedagogical partnership work in 2006 at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges, two liberal arts institutions in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Three models for embracing student expertise in the development of pedagogical partnership programs

Cook-Sather

2023

Nearly a decade ago, two colleagues and I defined student-faculty (student-staff) pedagogical partnership as premised on the notion that students have expertise to contribute to processes of preparing for, reflecting on, and revising teaching and learning practices (Cook-Sather et al., 2014). This expertise is based in part on students' experiences as students. It is also informed by unique intersections of socio-cultural identities and lived experiences that students bring to educational contexts and analyses (Brown et al., 2020;Cook-Sather et al., 2021;Doktor et al., 2019;Matthews, 2017) and by students' engagement in sense-making about their identities and life experiences. As pedagogical partnership work expands around the globe, I am seeing undergraduate students at my own and other institutions develop another form of expertise: in pedagogical partnership work itself.I embarked on developing student-faculty pedagogical partnership work in 2006 at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges, two liberal arts institutions in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. With student, faculty, and staff collaborators and several generous grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, I co-created Students as Learners and Teachers (SaLT), the signature program of the Teaching and Learning Institute (TLI) in this bi-college consortium. Through SaLT, undergraduates take up semester-long, paid positions as pedagogical partners to faculty members. As pedagogical partners, these students are neither enrolled in nor necessarily have knowledge of the subject matter of the course on which they and their faculty partners focus. They conduct weekly classroom observations, meet weekly with their faculty partners, and meet weekly with me and other student partners to discuss how best to be in dialogue and collaboration with faculty partners. Hundreds of faculty and students have participated in the SaLT program, and options for participation have expanded beyond this basic model (for a list of other programs, visit the TLI's Programs and Opportunities page).Because of my decades of experience directing SaLT, I have been invited to support a wide range of colleges and universities around the world in developing partnership programs (see partial lists at TLI's Pedagogical Partnerships at Other Institutions page and Developing Pedagogical Partnerships). Since staffing budgets are always limited, I have begun in this consulting work to recommend hiring students-while they are undergraduates or soon after they graduate-into limited-term roles to conceptualize, facilitate, co-create, or otherwise support the development of pedagogical partnership programs. This approach not only acknowledges student expertise, it also builds institutional structures that affirm that