Title: Prioritisation of Institutional Strategy and Imagination of Student Benefits in Student Partnership Practices – Perspectives of Partnership Scheme Leaders

Author: Daisy Bao

Theme: Partnerships

Equipping students with the necessary competencies to navigate an unpredictable world is becoming one purpose of higher education (OECD, 2018). Humanitarian approaches to centre students in learning and teaching have evolved from simply listening to students’ opinions to facilitating extra-curriculum collaborations and reciprocity between students and staff in the past twenty years (QAA, 2002; Healey, 2005). Such student-staff partnership relationship in research initiatives (SSPnR) is not solely a stepping-stone of academia for students (Lowe & Hakim, 2020), but is considered to be an approach to enhance skills that are integral to a future life and career in different industries (UCL, 2022).
Although the word ‘partnership’ is aspirational, it confronts vagueness and conflicts due to its wide use without strictly examining different contexts in the higher education system (Russell, 2007; Kim, 2009). Moreover, small-scale SSPnR initiatives conducted at the school or discipline level dominated the practices and literature, while little light was thrown on institutional schemes.
This poster presented my research on the nature of student-staff partnerships by investigating four institutional student-led SSPnR schemes in four UK universities. Three data sets were produced, including two-round individual interviews with students, staff, and scheme leaders, and three diaries produced by each student and staff, as well as institutional policies and personal information. These data sets triangulate characteristics of partnerships with four main themes, including contextual motivations of different stakeholders, cognitive differentials based on roles and understanding, immediate and sustainable benefits, and conflicts arising in student partnerships.