Building Engaged Communities requires Foundations of Trust

Student-staff partnerships have a significant role to play in enhancing student participation by amplifying their voices, building engaged communities and encouraging a sense of student belonging and satisfaction (Mathews et al., 2019). Partnership working provides skill development opportunities, flexibility, and recognition for students (Roy et al., 2023) and can facilitate student confidence, belonging and enhance communication skills (Mercer-Mapstone et al., 2021; Cook-Sather, 2018).

This Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) Collaborative Enhancement project brought together staff and students from four institutions in the United Kingdom to explore student-staff partnership working, with the funding used to employ eight student researchers, two at each of the partner institutions. Listening to both students’ and staff’s experiences of partnership to identify the underpinning values of engaged communities was central to identifying how to enhance active student participation. Staff and student perceptions of partnership working were collected using online narrative interviews (n=41). The student researchers guided these interviews, encouraging participants to reflect deeply on their experiences.

Within the interviews, both staff and students noted the importance of trust and trustworthiness, and it was repeatedly identified as fundamental to effective partnership working. We will use narrative fragments from the study to offer an insight into student and staff experiences, explore the key themes for establishing successful partnerships, and showcase the toolkit resources developed on setting expectations, trust, empowerment and impact. Reflections on future developments of the process and potential wider implications for implementation at other institutions will also be discussed.

References

Cook-Sather, A. (2018). Listening to equity-seeking perspectives: how students’ experiences of pedagogical partnership can inform wider discussions of student success. Higher Education Research & Development, 37(5), 923-936. https://doi.org/10.1080/072943...
Matthews, K. E., Mercer-Mapstone, L., Dvorakova, S. L., Acai, A. Cook-Sather, A., Felten, P., Healey, M., Healey, R.L., & Marquis, E. (2019). Enhancing outcomes and reducing inhibitors to the engagement of students and staff in learning and teaching partnerships: implications for academic development. International Journal for Academic Development, 24(3), 246-259. https://doi.org/10.1080/136014...
Mercer-Mapstone, L., Islam, M. & Reid, T. (2021). Are we just engaging ‘the usual suspects’? Challenges in and practical strategies for supporting equity and diversity in student-staff partnership initiatives. Teaching in Higher Education, 26(2), 227-245. https://doi.org/10.1080/135625...
Roy, J., Chittle, L., Ismail, E., & Kustra, E. (2023). Students as partners within a centre for teaching and learning: a qualitative analysis of challenges and benefits. International Journal for Academic Development, 28(4), 481-494. https://doi.org/10.1080/136014...