Student-Staff Partnerships in Higher Education: Inclusivity, Power Dynamics and Challenges

This book offers an insight into current-day Student as Partners (SaP) practice, presenting reflections by staff and students from global institutions. Student as Partners (SaP) is a practice that involves creating partnerships with students to create their learning journey. It enables student empowerment by giving them agency and a space creating student voice, and allows for close connections and quick feedback on teaching practices and policies. In the past ten years, there has been a rise in SaP practices in Australian higher education institutes, and a swell in dedicated scholarship from educators and researchers, reflecting an appetite for student-led approaches to higher education. Born from the (inter) national Students as Partners Roundtable from 2023, this book engages with “Respect, Reciprocity and Responsibility” (Cook-Sather et al., 2014) as central themes within Student-Staff partnerships. It brings together reflections from students and educators, as well as doctoral candidates operating in a sort of “middle ground.” This book also expands on current literature, with reflections on SaP practices across the Asia-Pacific region sitting alongside those from the United Kingdom, North America, and South Africa.

Dr. Nira Rahman is an academic specializing in Educational Design and Student Engagement in the Arts Teaching Innovation (ATI) in the Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne, Australia. Her specific interests lie in diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education; Students as Partners (SaP) and co-creation in teaching practices; student voice and agency; intercultural competencies and better communication and inclusion in diverse classrooms. She leads various co-creation and Staff-Student Partnership initiatives across the faculty, and is a member of several multi-institutional international research groups. Nira is a recipient of the Dean’s Award for her significant contribution to the student experience and a Senior Fellow of Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA). She is a published author in the Bangla Language and also regularly writes for international media on various topics that connect her academic interests to her personal insights around culture, language and identity.

Dr. Callum Reid is a teaching specialist in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He specializes in first-year teaching, object-based learning and site-based learning, and his classrooms have won awards for excellence and positive student engagement. His current research looks at University-led intensive travel subjects, as well as ways to encourage and facilitate reading in higher education. Callum also has experience teaching and publishing in art history and museum studies, specializing in early modern art and histories of collecting and display. He has worked as a collection manager, curator and in the secondary art market. He knits this experience into his current teaching-and-learning research, with particular interest in the narrative power of objects when in dialogue with one another as part of a collection. 

Dr. Wajeehah Aayeshah is a lecturer in Curriculum Design at the Arts Teaching Innovation (ATI), University of Melbourne, Australia. As an academic geek, she develops meaningful learning experiences and investigates co-creation of teaching and learning. Her current project 'kindness in pedagogy' explores kind academic practices. These include engaging ‘Students as Partners’, ‘joyful teaching,’ and creating ‘equity-driven academic culture’. She also collaborates with artists and game designers to produce creative narratives.