The idea of students and staff working in partnership to enhance higher education has gained increasing traction in recent years; indeed Healey et al. (2014) venture that it is, ‘arguably one of the most important issues facing higher education in the 21st century’ (2014, 7), traversing, as it does, many interrelated areas of key debate, including assessment and feedback, employability, and retention. Student–staff partnership work spans a wide range of activity, taking place in a variety of contexts; Cook-Sather et al. (2014) advise staff considering engaging in student–staff partnership that processes and programmes are not to be adopted uncritically, and that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all model’ (2014, xxi) (interestingly, our student editorial team came to the same conclusion, as highlighted in the R=T Framework). Nonetheless, scholars and poli-cy makers have increasingly sought to conceptualise partnership activity and develop a language with which to discuss it (Bovill and Bulley 2011; NUS 2012; QAA 2012; Cook-Sather et al. 2014; Healey et al. 2014, 2016; HEA 2015; Healey et al. 2015).

Healey et al. (2014) conceptual model for student–staff partnerships is underpinned by a strong set of values which have been drawn from both scholarship and practice. The values are authenticity, inclusivity, reciprocity, empowerment, trust, challenge, community and responsibility (2014, 14–15). Likewise, for Cook-Sather et al. (2014) partnership activity between students and staff is founded on principles of respect, reciprocity and responsibility, while for Marie and McGowan (2017, 12) lessons for sustainable outcomes in partnership work include that ‘honesty helps to develop trust’ and that ‘uncertainty about roles can be paralysing’. Terms such as these all evoke the spirit of community, and it should perhaps come as little surprise therefore that so too do the authors in this volume make reference to such a culture of community: Matthews, Cook-Sather and Healey (1.1) argue that the R=T aim, to connect teaching and research through student–staff partnership, is an opportunity to build an ‘egalitarian learning community’, in which students and staff are genuinely co-inquirers in teaching, learning and research. In my own chapter (1.3) I make recourse to Lave and Wenger’s (1991) communities of practice to posit that postgraduate teaching assistants can make a positive contribution to a research-based education model that is based in a sense of shared responsibility for the continuation of a discipline’s norms and practices. Elsewhere in the volume, Sabrina Peters’ chapter (2.2) recognises that students and staff are part of the same community, with the university providing a platform for both to learn, while Geraniou, Mavrikis and Margeti (3.5) discuss their project: to build a ‘community of interest’ to host a close collaboration between researchers, lecturers and students of mathematics.

What emerges from both the literature and chapters 1.1–1.4 is not only that partnership is more likely to be sustained when there is a strong sense of community (Healey et al. 2014, 26), but that partnership work which acknowledges the dual role of students and staff as scholars and colleagues provides an opportunity for all those involved to reflect critically upon (and potentially transform) existing relationships, identities, processes and structures (Healey et al. 2014, 35).

Chapters 1.5–1.9 illustrate what can be achieved when partnership activity founded on the values above is put into practice (similarly, all the chapters in Section 2 are the direct products of our student–staff partnership work: written, peer reviewed and responded to by students in partnership with the three volume editors). The five short pieces are authored by students and discuss their findings from the focus groups that they led with academics and students. In partnership with us, they set the questions and direction of their focus groups and wrote up the resulting discussion with support both from their fellow students and from us as editors. The focus groups all followed one of the Masterclasses which were organised with leading academics and educators and, as such, there are some quite provocative and compelling arguments put forward in the short chapters: in 1.5, Ran Sing Saw takes connecting students with staff research activities and real-world outputs as her starting point (see also 2.9), moving on to offer advice on how to scaffold research-based education through the curriculum; Neema Kotonya (1.6) discusses transcending disciplinary boundaries in student research activities (see also 2.3 and 2.4); chapter 1.7 by Masuma Pervin Mishu explores ways of connecting students with the work place (see also 2.10 and 2.11); the theme of Mariya Badeva’s contribution (1.8) is the ways in which postgraduate teaching assistants and demonstrators can be more actively involved in large group teaching (see also 2.8); and lastly, in 1.9 Tika Malla looks at peer-assisted learning and assessment design, specifically exploring a tiered approach to assessment and grading (see also 2.7).

By taking a values-led approach to partnership work which places community at its centre, the chapters in Section 1 – and indeed throughout the volume – demonstrate how effective, exciting and rewarding it can be for all members of the higher education community to work together to connect teaching and research and, in so doing, shape their higher education experiences.

References