Staff and students were also asked about challenges they experienced in relation to the operationalization of staff-student partnerships. This is important to consider as going forward, sustainability is the key if we want to capitalise on the benefits for both staff and students and we may need to re-envisage some of the challenges as opportunities for staff and students to think differently about learning and teaching in higher
education. During data analysis, I coded the responses to this question as C (challenge) and grouped these together during phase 3 and 4. I then looked for patterns in the responses and it became evident that there were three sub-themes applicable for both staff and students: time, resistance, and capacity (see Appendix 3).
5.6.1 Time
For some, the challenge of fitting in the perceived extra work that working in partnership brings is a challenge, this is particularly troublesome for staff or students that are part-time and a creative look at how and when discussions take place needs to happen. There is also the issue that getting involved might detract from the primary focus of working or studying at university. One part-time student commented:
‘When I agreed to do this, I didn’t realise there was going to be a residential or set times for meetings. If I realised there would be meetings during day-time hours, I probably would have turned down the opportunity to do this. I was invited to this 12 months ago, if I hadn’t been to the residential, my involvement would have been one meeting and one letter and I wouldn’t have been happy with that.’ (S5, M,2)
Another student when asked about challenges, commented:
‘Time! Meetings are not as regular as they should be. There should be an allocated time for this. Maybe second years could do workshops with the first years and we could
feedback to the tutors how this goes. Balancing the time from my own studies to make time for this could be a problem. I don’t mind, other students might.’ (S3,F,2)
Another student also commented:
‘Well… its probably about the time thing… time constraints, physicality problems, where if there is anything that needs discussed, it might be hard to… everybody has busy lives, that might be a barrier. (S1,F,1)
5.6.2 Resistance
For some staff, it would seem that engaging students as partners can be a challenge to the ‘status quo’ and to the traditional way of doing things in higher education. In this project, the discipline teams to a great extent were willing partners but there are still tensions. In promoting this across the University, consideration will have to be given to staff who may not come as willingly to the process.
As one staff member commented:
‘When students started paying fees they became
customers – with a sense of entitlement – they expect the answer.’ (T1, F,13)
Another staff member highlighted the problem when not all course team members buy into the process:
‘There are other staff not engaging in the staff-student partnership. Not sustainable going forward’ (T4,M,29)
5.6.3 Capacity
Capacity in this context is about the skills and abilities of individuals to operate and adapt in a changing world. For some students, particularly first- years, there seemed to be an issue with their confidence in their abilities to interact with staff and contribute in a meaningful way. This needs careful consideration and training/development up-front may need to available if students are being asked to adopt very different roles from that which they have been accustomed to at school.
As one student commented:
‘Knowing when to come forward and speak is a challenge. There always is a divide and that will never change. It’s hard to know when your input is valuable and whether or not to sit back. Even if I have idea, I’m never sure whether it’s valuable or not. Sometimes as a class representative, I try very hard to represent the views of the entire class but that is not always possible. It’s not inhibitive but it’s something that I try to do. (S6,M,1)
Similarly another student commented:
‘You’re not entirely certain which of your points were valid or not valid. As a student you are the person there with the least amount of knowledge, as much as it was good to be in that
environment – possibility more knowledge due to the fact that you are there as the student but I think that overall your opinions are less important than those of the lecturers who are administering the course.’ (S5,M,2)
For another student, her issue around capacity is more about having limits set, particularly where other students might expect too much:
‘It’s almost something negative, I feel that because people are always asking me things… about assignments and stuff like that, it almost puts you under pressure to do well.’ (S1,F,1) For one staff member, the challenge is in relation to understanding the capacities of both staff and students and trusting in the process to enhance practice:
‘A challenge is being able to let go and trust my students, I’ve had to let go the notion that I know best, that I know what the students are experiencing’. (T3, M,12)
5.7 Summary
My reflections, on supporting academic colleagues and students to engage in staff student partnerships as part of this WWSRS change programme, and drawing on the results presented from the staff and students that participated in this research suggests that if staff and students willingly work together in partnership then that provides a learning opportunity for both staff and students –where each can see things from the others’ perspective and the barriers to learning can be reduced. As stated above, the nature of the sample limits generalisation of the findings. The nature of the staff student partnerships was focused on two types of partnership working as defined by the HEA (2015) and discussed in Chapter 2: learning, teaching and
assessment; and curriculum design and pedagogic consultancy. However, through these rich descriptions, it does offer an insight into how partnerships were experienced in this context by staff and students, and has provided new understandings to this recent phenomenon (Finlay, 2014; Merleau-Ponty, 1945). These new understandings have been used to form the development of a Guide for staff and students to further enhance SE at Ulster and a wider audience.
I suggest that students as partners as an ethos has the potential to challenge traditional ‘them and us’ attitudes that exist in HE and as demonstrated in the
context of this research study it can be enabling in terms of promoting belonging and involvement hence motivating students to engage and prompting staff to create learning climates based on trust and shared responsibilities. If so, the challenge going forward is to encourage all staff and students to embrace a partnership ethos so that the learning opportunity is open for all. In order to address this challenge, I engaged in a further stage of evaluation and interpretation in the form of focus groups. Chapter 6 discusses the outcomes from the focus groups and the iterative development of the Guide. Chapter 7 further discusses the results from the interviews and the focus groups in relation to the literature and the Ulster context.