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There is a small but growing body of literature about engaging students as partners (SaP) in Asian countries. To further collective understanding of learner-teacher partnership practices in China, we invited undergraduate students and academics from three Chinese universities to complete a survey on their involvement in, and sense of importance of,...
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... sure what this means" provided participants with an option when they did not understand the practice. Below, examples in Table 1 show the 4-point Likert scale for each indicator. Because student evaluations for teachers and courses (subjects or units of study) are commonplace in China, as they are in many universities worldwide, one of the 17 SaP practices explores such surveys. ...Citations
... El enfoque de SaP puede tener varias implicaciones para la cultura institucional. Puede requerir un cambio en las actitudes y creencias sobre los estudiantes, un cambio en las prácticas de enseñanza y aprendizaje, y un cambio en las estructuras y políticas de la institución (Bonney, 2018;Bovill et al., 2014;Bryson, 2016;Healey et al., 2018;Liang & Matthews, 2021;Little, 2012;Lubicz-Nawrocka, 2023;Miles & Power, 2017;O'Shea et al., 2022;Pereira et al., 2020;Salisbury et al, 2020;Whelehan, 2020). La mentalidad tradicional de la educación superior se basa en una relación jerárquica entre profesores-administradores y estudiantes. ...
El objetivo de este análisis teórico es contestar a la pregunta ¿cuáles son los beneficios y desafíos del enfoque de estudiantes como socios (Students as Partners - SaP) en la educación superior? Los hallazgos en términos de beneficios revelaron que los estudiantes que participan en la toma de decisiones académicas e institucionales pueden tener una mayor satisfacción con su educación y son más propensos a tener éxito académico. Además este enfoque puede tener un impacto positivo en el incremento de la calidad de la educación superior, y puede promover la equidad a nivel institucional. A pesar de los beneficios asociados con SaP en la educación superior, también hay desafíos que deben considerarse y disminuirse para implementar con éxito este enfoque. Estos desafíos incluyen la resistencia al cambio, la falta de tiempo y recursos, y la inclusión. Además del análisis se ofrecen recomendaciones para instituciones de educación superior que adopten este enfoque para la mejora de su calidad.
... There is growing emphasis within higher education on engaging with students as partners (SaP; Healey et al., 2014;Healey et al., 2016;Matthews et al., 2019) as a means to transform students from the recipient to the producer of knowledge (Neary, 2010). Although partnerships take on various forms depending on context (Bovill, 2019), rooted in these varied practices is often a common set of values (Liang & Matthews, 2021). The Faculty of Science at our institution is interested in exploring ways in which student-faculty partnerships can be formally embedded and encouraged as an effective method of collaboration to support students who have been underrepresented and underserved and to empower students and faculty to reflect on, discuss, and reimagine how they can work together to cultivate cultural shifts . ...
... SaP is considered a values-based practice (Matthews et al., 2018), and regardless of there being multiple ways to engage in partnerships, there tends to be common values guiding this method of collaboration (Liang & Matthews, 2021), despite the variability in how these values are presented and described. As the movement of student partnerships extends across institutions, it becomes increasingly important to understand the values that underpin this practice and how these values are perceived by the students and faculty engaged in these relationships. ...
There is growing support for the use of student-faculty partnerships within higher education. Successful partnerships, capable of sustainable transformation, require the presence of several underlying values held by both faculty and students. The purpose of this study was to examine differences in the perceptions of student-faculty partnership values across science faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and determine whether these values differ by partnership category. Faculty and students responded to the Student Staff Partnership Questionnaire which included five scales aimed to assess values for successful student partnerships: reciprocal respect, influence, autonomy, commitment, and partnership. Our findings suggest that faculty perceive themselves as aligning with the values of reciprocal respect, influence, autonomy, and partnership to a higher degree than undergraduate and graduate students perceive faculty as adhering to them. No differences in values were noted across partnership categories. Implications for higher education are discussed.
... In China, there is a small but growing body of research reporting on the implementation of explicitly named SaP practices (Liang & Matthews, 2021a). A recent scoping review identified several of these studies, where SaP was explicitly evoked, and practices adopted into Chinese universities with Confucianism identified as a barrier to realising the full benefits of SaP (Liang & Matthews, 2022). ...
Everyday learner–teacher interactions are a key factor in student engagement and learning. There is thus growing scholarly attention on the relational practices of engaging students as partners (SaP) in higher education. In Chinese universities, there is an emerging literature exploring learner–teacher relationships as a partnership. To advance the global conversation on SaP as it expands in China, we designed an exploratory study to understand how broader context and culture influence the implementation of the learner–teacher pedagogical partnership in Chinese universities. To do so, we drew on interviews with 27 undergraduate students and 17 academics in three Chinese universities discussing learner–teacher interactions and relationships. Using thematic analysis, the study revealed nuanced understandings and complex tensions at play in how students and academics reflected on the collectivist relational orientation of China, the risks of stepping outside of top-down policy-driven mandates, and the external global influences shaping everyday pedagogical interactions. The study is timely given the emerging literature on SaP in China and contributes much needed insight into the role of culture shaping the context of learner–teacher relationships in China. By better surfacing cultural forces, forms of partnership can flourish in China that are culturally situated and responsive.
... Research is now emerging on SaP in Asia Liang et al., 2020). For example, Liang and Matthews (2021b) surveyed several hundred undergraduate students and teachers from three Chinese universities with most participants indicating the importance of partnership activities and identifying that some such activities were already occurring in classroom contexts. In a qualitative study, Kaur and Yong Bing (2020, p. 3) investigated power relation between students and academics in pedagogical partnership practices in Malaysia and found that students 'are taught at a young age to show respect, listen, and obey, rather than question them [the teachers]', indicating cultural dissonance in how SaP values and theories unfold in Asian tertiary educational settings. ...
There is an increasing focus on relationship-rich education and relational pedagogies in higher education. Engaging students as partners (SaP) to nurture values-based pedagogical relationships is one such approach, yet it is contested with limited research outside of anglophone countries. To advance a collective understanding of SaP as a global practice, we interviewed 35 postgraduate students at a research-intensive university in Hong Kong with a hybridised educational setting combining Chinese and westernised strategies and heritages. Reflecting on their learner-teacher relationships as both undergraduate and postgraduate students, they discussed differing senses of student identity that shaped how they perceived their pedagogical relationships: entanglement of positioning themselves as followers, customers, and co-teachers. The influence of neoliberalism, capitalism, and marketisation of higher education in the Hong Kong context was evident throughout the interviews. We discuss the implications for learner-teacher relationships as a pedagogical partnership in the broader hybridised higher education context of Hong Kong. In doing so, we argue that students are navigating an in-betweenness that shapes how they see themselves and the pedagogical relationships they form with teaching staff.
... Cultural barriers, such as the teacher-student dichotomy and the belief that the teacher is always right, therefore make partnership work more challenging from a cultural perspective (Kaur 2020). Liang and Matthews (2021) also note that the largely Western principles of partnership practice do not always translate well in Eastern contexts. Such a cultural barriers exists in Japan as well. ...
In this reflective essay, I write from my perspective as a member of the Office of Management for Teaching and Learning at the University of Tsukuba, about what I see as the attitudes and intentions that are conducive to partnership, focusing on pedagogical partnership. Specifically, I aim to clarify my attitudes and intentions, along with the attitudes and intentions of students who participated in internal quality assurance activities, as well as those of the teachers who worked in partnership with these students. These efforts to name and clarify the attitudes and intentions required in order to form successful student-staff pedagogical partnerships in a Confucian-heritage culture demonstrate that it is essential to adapt the Western idea of 'students as partners' within the Eastern context. I begin with a discussion of Japan as a Confucian-heritage culture, describe the University of Tsukuba's effort to position students as partners to teachers in internal quality assurance and my role in that effort, and conclude with a discussion of the attitudes and intentions that students and teachers brought to this work.
... This case study aims to make sense of GLC directors' real-life instances and experiences by shedding light on how the co-author, as a student, experiences and perceives such student-staff collaboration in the context of GLC and the above five criteria. While there has been a growing body of literature examining staff-student partnerships, most partnerships are framed in the Western context, while only a few can be found in the Chinese context (e.g., Ho, 2017;Liang et al., 2020;Liang & Matthews, 2021). However, Healey, Flint, and Harrington (2016) comment that research should be further extended and theorised to much broader contexts and ways in which partnerships may take place. ...
In this case study, both authors look into their experiences with a student-driven experiential learning initiative in the form of an academic services committee. The committee embodies a developing community of undergraduate students reading the double degrees in government and laws and also aims at promoting the scholarly study of public affairs and jurisprudence within a traditional and comprehensive research-intensive Hong Kong university. As the flagship student community of the double degree programme, the committee provides tailor-made services for current students and connects them to alumni networks. The authors critically evaluate the multipurpose nature of the committee by applying the five criteria for successful staff-student collaborations, namely (a) reciprocal trust and respect, (b) self-efficacy, (c) flexibility and autonomy, (d) commitment, as well as (e) ownership and responsibility (Martens et al., 2019). Within a synergic collaborative model, students can assume a leadership role in creating and managing multidisciplinary co-curricular learning experiences, with faculty members only assuming indirect, non-voting, and advisory roles under limited circumstances.
... A dominant interpretation of Confucianism as a hierarchical relationship between teacher and learner necessary for the transmission of knowledge from knower to novice (Barratt-Pugh et al., 2019) is typically viewed as an obstacle to learner-teacher relationship framed as a partnership (Kaur et al., 2019). However, recent research has raised questions about the shifting and diverse identities of Chinese students (Liang et al., 2020) and the interest of students across Chinese universities to engage in partnership practices with their instructors (Dai et al., 2021;Liang & Matthews, 2021b). ...
Students as partners (SaP) is gaining attention in higher education (HE) as universities worldwide rethink pedagogical practices through a relationship-rich lens. Many studies have examined partnership practices, conceptions of learner-teacher partnerships, and its application in various (mainly anglophone) contexts. However, relatively few studies have explored SaP issues in non-anglophone contexts (e.g. China). In this study, we interviewed 20 lecturers at a Chinese university to understand how they perceived the role of students in teaching and learning. Our reflexive thematic analysis found that many lecturers were open to, and some already practicing forms of, partnership practices. But pragmatic, structural, and cultural issues caused hesitation, particularly the cultural heritage of Confucian education and global HE competition drivers rewarding research outputs over teaching practices. This study is an initial step in exploring academics’ perceptions of SaP in a changing Chinese HE system with a strong policy focus on student-centred approaches.
... The focus on equity and inclusion arises from concerns that without deliberate attention, design, and evaluative lens, student partnership will favour like students and like staff (Matthews, 2017) that excludes students historically marginalised in educational systems (Bindra et al., 2018) or further privileges particular students with high levels of social and cultural capital in universities (Dwyer, 2018). Scholars are examining cross-cultural partnership practices (Zhang, Matthews, & Lui, in press), learner-teacher partnerships across Chinese universities (Liang & Matthews, 2021), students with disabilities and survivors through a Mad politics for partnership (de Bie, 2020), and role of partnership in racial justice/anti-racism practices (Fraser & Usman, 2021). By expanding how and where partnership can take place, opportunities for engagement can continue to extend to students from equity-seeking cohorts who have been traditionally underserved by educational systems. ...
Student representation and student partnership differ and the difference matters. To further scholarly understanding of, and appreciation for, the important difference between the two, we examine these two commonly evoked conceptions for student voice in higher education. We draw on two points of difference—responsibility and access—to illuminate conceptualisations and discourses of each in the current literature. In doing so, we clarify the unique contributions of each, shaped by differing contexts of interaction, and articulate issues arising by confounding and conflating partnership and representation in the name of student voice. Advancing an argument for an ecosystem of student participation grounded in student voice, we warn of the harm in positioning student partners as speaking for other students and the risk of diminishing the importance of elected student representation systems in favour of staff selected student partner models of student representation.
Engaging students as partners (SaP) is an approach promoting meaningful pedagogical relationships in higher education. Scholars have called for more culturally situated research on SaP that compares Anglophone countries with other contexts. In response, we conducted an exploratory qualitative study by interviewing 36 undergraduate students from Australia, Mainland China, and Hong Kong. Adopting the relational lens of SaP, the interviews focused on conceptualisations of pedagogical partnership, specifically learner–teacher identities and power dynamics. Through comparative and reflexive thematic analysis, we found that understandings of partnership in different contexts were influenced by broader cultural differences. The findings showed that the perception of SaP in Australia was consistent with the prevailing Western discourse, but the notion of SaP was adapted and re-shaped in Mainland China, and in Hong Kong, there were diverse interpretations of it. This study contributes to new understandings of the influence of specific sociocultural and policy variations in SaP practises through culturally situated and comparative research using theorisations of perpetual translation. We argue for future research to contribute collective insights and nuanced, diverse understandings that expand SaP as an approach to global scholarship.
