1. New roles and thinking on staff and student engagement
Dr John Peters
Head of Academic Practice

2. What’s the difference between engagement and partnership?

3. Key points Overview of student engagement Student Partnership
Implications for PDP
Personal learning
Learning for an unknowable future
Learning to create a better future

4. Types of Student Engagement
Student learning in class
Student-centred, active, challenging & deep learning
Representation and participation institutionally
Governance and quality processes
Identity and belonging
Inclusion, participation, progression & achievement

5. Models of Student Engagement
Market model
Development model
Student as consumer
Purchasing HE
HE as a private economic benefit
University as HE provider
Responding to consumer complaints & demands
Engagement to compete in the market and enhance the brand
Student as partner
Joining a University as a learning community
HE as a mutual, social benefit
Engaging in dialogue
Engagement to co-creating knowledge and understanding for development and growth

6. Quality Assurance Agency
‘Partnership working is based on the values of: openness; trust and honesty; agreed shared goals and values; and regular communication between the partners. It … recognises that all members in the partnership have legitimate, but different, perceptions and experiences. By working together to a common agreed purpose, steps can be taken that lead to enhancements for all concerned. The terms reflect a mature relationship based on mutual respect between students and staff.’

7. National Union of Students
Students as active participants in the learning process
Shaping their course delivery and content
Co-creators of knowledge
Co-producers of learning outcomes
Collaborators and agents of change
Partnership as the goal of student engagement

8. Examples of partnership 1
Students as co-researchers (Healey & Jenkins, 2009),
Students as change agents (Dunne & Zandstra, 2011);
‘Student as producer’ (Neary 2010),
Students as consultants (Cook-Sather, 2010)
Students as co-creators of curricula (Bovill, 2014)
Students as partners (

9. Examples of partnership 2
Birmingham City University [academic partners]
Winchester [fellows]
York St John [researchers]
Canterbury Christchurch [SALTs]
Worcester [AI & academic partners]
Newman [academic, research and community partners]

10. What is the role of PDP and PDP practitioners in all this?
Strategic engagement
Encouraging development
Promoting engagement
Reaching staff through student engagement
Capturing or helping describe engagement
Promoting and capturing the learning

11. Personal learning
‘Now the project has finished I’d like to share my feelings about what am amazing experience it has been … what I learnt about myself and realizing what I can achieve when I focus and step out of my comfort zone. A brilliant opportunity that I would recommend to any student … Well done Newman ’

12. Barnett (2012) Learning for an unknown future
Educational Development     Disciplinary Initiation           No risk
        Disciplinary Wonder         High risk
      Generic Skills       Educational Transformation
Human being
as such
‘Even generic skills offer no succour here for, in a world of uncertainty, in which the
self is destabilized, an educational project built around skills cannot meet the bill. For
what is in question is human being in a world of conceptual and ontological uncertainty;
and that is not going to be addressed by talk of skills, generic or otherwise. A different
order of educational response is called for. … This pedagogy allows for human flourishing as
such. A human flourishing here is precisely that of living effectively amid uncertainty.’ [p.73-4]

13. Learning to change the future
‘Education is “the practice of freedom,” the means by which men and women deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.’
[Richard Shaull, Foreword to Freire (1970) Pedagogy of the oppressed]
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world
Nelson Mandela

14. The Pedagogy of Hope
Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with student-teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.
Paulo Freire

15. The Pedagogy of Partnership
Building from a shared hope - believing in our transformative potential
Establishing a dream of transformation – asking what is the best we can be?
Promoting respectful dialogue - hearing under-represented voices about our lived experiences & espoused values.
Involving co-investigation & shared reflection, problem-posing, curiosity, rational exploration & creativity.
Seeking the co-construction of solutions aimed at a better way of being.
An ongoing, transformative and collaborative process of being and becoming.
So, borrowing from Freire, the NUS and the QAA then - with a leavening of living educational theory and appreciative inquiry - the pedagogy of partnership might be characterised as:

16. So what’s the place for PDP and PDP practitioners in this
So what’s the place for PDP and PDP practitioners in this? Questions & Issues

17. References 1
Ronald Barnett (2012): Learning for an unknown future, Higher Education Research & Development, 31:1, 65-77
Bovill, C. (2014). An investigation of co-created curricula within higher education in the UK, Ireland and the USA. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 51(1)
Cook-Sather, A. (2010). Students as Learners and Teachers: Taking Responsibility, Transforming Education, and Redefining Accountability. Curriculum Inquiry, 40 (4).
Cook-Sather, A., Bovill, C., & Felten, P. (2014). Engaging Students as Partners in Teaching and Learning: A Guide for Faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Dunne, E. & Zandstra, R. (2011). Students as change agents. New ways of engaging with learning and teaching in higher education. Bristol: ESCalate Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Education / University of Exeter.
Healey, M. & Jenkins, A. (2009). Developing Undergraduate Research and Inquiry. York: Higher Education Academy.
Karima Kadi-Hanifi, Ozlem Dagman, John Peters, Elle Snell, Caroline Tutton & Trevor Wright (2014) ‘Engaging students and staff with educational development through appreciative inquiry’, Innovations in Education and Teaching International.

18. References 2
National Union of Students, UK (2012): A manifesto for partnership, [accessed 30/1/2014]
Neary,M. (2010). Student as Producer: A Pedagogy for the Avant-Garde? Learning Exchange, 1,(1).
John Peters (2013) ‘Hearing voices and seeing visions’, Educational Developments 14,1 
Quality Assurance Agency (2012) UK Quality Code for HE: Part B, Assuring and enhancing academic quality; chapter 5, student engagement.
Paul Trowler and Vicki Trowler (2010) Framework for action: enhancing student engagement at the institutional level (York: The Higher Education Academy)
Vicki Trowler (2010) Student engagement literature review (York: HEA)
Caroline Tutton & Elle Snell (2013) Student researchers as educational developers: our journey, Educational Developments, 14.1