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Participatory approaches are receiving renewed attention in the 'students as partners' (SaP) and 'feedback' discourse communities, respectively. SaP scholars tend to focus on pedagogy (pedagogical partnerships) and curriculum (co-creation). Assessment and feedback, as connective and relational practices that bridge these two domains, receive less empirical and conceptual attention as partnership praxis. Both share commitments to participatory forms of democratic education and critical pedagogy. This conceptual article transgresses artificial boundaries often constructed between discourse communities through bringing into conversation established scholars from both. In doing so, we illuminate two points of intersection: dialogue and trust. First, speaking back to the SaP community, we urge greater recognition of feedback practices as partnership praxis entangled with both pedagogical and curricular praxis. Second, speaking back to the feedback community, we advocate for a foregrounding and richer theorisations of learner-teacher power dynamics in feedback praxis. We conclude by considering the implications for both discourse communities.

Higher education communities are becoming more diverse and seeking to create more intercultural interaction and culturally responsive pedagogies. One promising approach gaining scholarly attention is engaging students in intercultural partnership practices. We have conducted a scoping review to investigate theorisations and practices of intercultural partnership in the current literature. In doing so, we identified 19 publications that explicitly explored learner-teacher partnership practices with learners and teachers from different cultural-linguistic contexts. Drawing on both descriptive and thematic analyses, we found an emerging scholarly attention to intercultural partnership motivated mainly by a 'what's working' study design with a tendency toward perceptions-based qualitative research methods. Thus, numerous benefits and challenges were identified, most overlapping with the broader partnership literature. However, there was a consistent undercurrent of culturally situated beliefs that shaped and complicated learner-teacher power dynamics. We encourage future research to focus on the process of intercultural partnership that contributes collective understanding about the unique power dynamics in such practices. Drawing on existing theories of translation and intercultural communication, we can develop new insights that advance the intercultural partnership theory-practice nexus.

Engaging students as partners in the scholarship of learning and teaching (SoTL) is a principle guiding good practice. Enthusiasm for student-faculty partnerships in learning and teaching continues to grow. In this essay, I want to invite readers to reflect with me about concerns of resistance to partnership practices. I interweave stories from my experiences with selected literature that is shifting the conversation about the 'challenge of resistance' in partnership work in learning and teaching. Positioning students as partners work as a values-based practice and in the context of 'scaling-up' partnership programs, I argue that our pre-occupation with resistance is problematic. Instead, we should accept resistance as part of a natural sense-making process that allows us to think together about the complexity of genuine pedagogical partnership.

Engaging with students as partners (SaP) in learning and teaching is fundamental about quality learner-teacher relationships. It is a growing and contested arena of pedagogical practice that is dominated by western scholarship. Seeking to expand understanding of partnership approaches, we conducted a scoping review guided by the question: what is known from the current literature about SaP practices and theorisations in Asia? The review identified 18 studies with half published in the last two years and a high frequency of citations to a limited number of western scholars. This signals that partnership in Asia is in its infancy and influenced by western practices. Yet, Asian scholars raised distinct cultural considerations that positioned Confucianism as an obstacle to learner-teacher relationships through partnership praxis. We outline implications to guide future research into student-teacher relationships in Asia that evoke broader interpretations of Confucianism that are seemingly more compatible with partnership praxis.

Chinese universities are increasingly entering into transnational higher education partnerships with institutions in primarily English-speaking countries. With this increase in programmes, there is a growing body of research investigating both policy and practice. Our study contributes insight into how students in a China-Australia programme experienced assessment drawing on theorisations of sustainable assessment. We present findings from interviews with 10 Chinese students who shared stories and reflections of their experiences of assessment and learning that reveal the complex ways students negotiated qualitatively different assessment experiences, while displaying sophisticated levels of agency, between Chinese and Australian universities. In making sense of the interviews in relation to sustainable assessment, we evoke notions of cultural ignorance to illuminate aspects of a cross-cultural ignorance in teaching and learning practices. In doing so, we argue that conversations about cultural ignorance combined with principles of sustainable assessment can create space to support partners to better plan and coordinate for meaningful assessment and learning experiences for students in cross-cultural articulation programmes.

This article explores the perceptions of participants following the first International Summer Institute (SI) on students as partners in higher education, a four-day professional development experience designed to foster student-staff partnerships. Approximately 9 months after the Institute, 10 participants were interviewed to understand their perceptions of student-staff partnership, and what role the SI played in supporting partnership working. We discuss the key themes that emerged from our interviews, and analyse these participant responses in comparison to responses collected during the 2016 SI. In evaluating our data, we consider the general efficacy of the SI and offer ideas for academic developers interested in supporting partnership work more generally.

Students as partners (SaP) is gaining momentum as both a practice and as a subject of analytic inquiry. This study draws on interviews to explore how formal, senior leaders responsible for teaching and learning conceptualise and imagine the implementation of SaP. While leaders saw SaP as occurring within a range of activities, the concept was typically discussed in terms of quality assurance activities, seldom conceived outside of a neoliberal discourse, and often at odds with theorising of SaP in the literature. Three, overlapping themes emerged from our analysis: (1) where partnership happens; (2) how partnership happens; and (3) benefits of partnership, which we interpreted through the lens of neoliberal rationalism. The findings have important implications for the compatibility of partnership practices with the neoliberal university and the role that formal leaders can play in shaping SaP practices.

A growing body of literature on students as partners in learning and teaching offers evidence on which academic developers can draw when supporting, advocating for, or engaging in partnerships. We extend a previous systematic review of the partnership literature by presenting an analysis and discussion of the positive and negative outcomes of partnership, and the inhibitors to partnership. Implications include the importance of academic developers supporting: the relational processes of partnership; institutional or structural change to address resistance; and the potential of partnership to make institutions more equitable and empowering spaces.

Engaging "students as partners" (SaP) in teaching and learning is an emerging yet contested topic in higher education. This study interviewed 16 students and staff working in partnership across 11 Australian universities to understand how they conceptualised SaP and the opportunities they believed SaP afforded their universities. Thematic analysis revealed three overlapping conceptions of partnership: "SaP as counter-narrative," "SaP as values-based practice," and "SaP as cultural change." The findings are first interpreted through the lens of liminality and an ethic of care. This is followed by a discussion of inclusivity of involvement, resistance, and reinforcement of neoliberal agendas despite good intentions. Finally, implications for cautious enactment of both practice and research are offered.

The "Tutors@UQ" programme provides an example of a formalised, institution-wide, cross-discipline, academic development programme to enhance the quality of teaching that has been maintained for seven years despite a pattern of substantial organisational change. We present a case study of the programme framed around a four-phase model of educational change and interpreted through the lens of social network perspectives that explores the question: What factors enabled the programme to become successful and sustained over time? Shared responsibility for the creation, development, and on-going implementation achieved through collaborative partnerships emerged as a central factor for the sustainability of the tutor induction programme.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing practice of engaging students as partners (SaP) has been conducted to nurture values-based pedagogical relationships. Yet, SaP is contested with little known about how Chinese students understand their relationships with teachers in a sector shifting toward student-centred approaches. To advance the collective understanding of SaP practices in China, we interviewed 30 postgraduate students who reflected on their learner-teacher relationships as undergraduate and postgraduate students while considering the possibilities of SaP practices. While some SaP practices emerged, students evoked the language of family to describe meaningful interactions with teachers. They raised pragmatic (large student numbers), epistemological (knowledge accumulation before knowledge construction), and cultural (hierarchical construct of power and authority) concerns about the possibilities of pedagogical partnerships. We argue that the willingness of university communities to raise questions about assumed learner-teacher hierarchy, power dynamics and identities will shape how student-centred and SaP practices unfold in Chinese universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]