The role of academic developers in initiating, developing, and supporting student-staff partnerships, Mick Healey & Professor Ruth L Healey
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The document explores the roles of academic developers in fostering student-staff partnerships (SSPs) to enhance academic development. It highlights the need for reimagining student roles as active participants and proposes a framework for academic developers to initiate, develop, and support SSPs through creating inclusive structures and relationships. The review emphasizes the importance of nuanced, context-dependent roles and seeks to stimulate conversations that lead to holistic academic development.
The role of academic developers in initiating, developing, and supporting student-staff partnerships, Mick Healey & Professor Ruth L Healey
- 1. The role of academic developers in initiating, developing, and supporting student- staff partnerships www.healeyheconsultants.co.uk Mick Healey mhealey @glos.ac.uk Ruth Healey r.healey @chester.ac.uk
- 2. Student-staff partnerships (SSPs) We believe for students truly to become essential actors in and agents of academic development, we as a field must fundamentally reimagine not only the roles of students in but also the purposes, practices, practitioners, and outcomes of our work (Felten et al., 2019, p. 195).
- 3. Key issues The variety of roles academic developers (ADs) may play in developing partnership learning communities for SSPs. SSP-informed academic development contributes to a more holistic form of academic development (Sutherland, 2018) How ADs may be supported to face the challenges in initiating, developing, and supporting SSPs through implementing a new framework
- 4. The role of students in academic development “… students – especially undergraduate students – typically occupy one of three positions in academic development: Objects, Consumers, or Actors” (Felten et al. 2019, p. 194). Adopting an SSP approach to academic development draws students more regularly into the role of ‘Actors,’ enabling them to support staff in developing their academic practice. Not to position students this way, Mercer-Mapstone (2023, p. 159) argues, ‘would be unethical’.
- 5. Method • A systematic narrative literature review about the role of ADs in SSPs • 35 SSP papers published in the InternationalJournal for Academic Development (IJAD) • Propose a framework for ADs initiating, developing, and supporting SSPs
- 6. Roles in developing partnership learning communities Roles discussed in the 35 articles grouped into three interrelated themes (Figure 1): Designing institutional structures, strategies, and practices that promote inclusive and sustainable SSPs Building the capacity of students, staff, and ADs by focusing on relationships Researching and evaluating SSP experiences and outcomes
- 7. Figure 1: The interrelated roles of ADs in SSPs in partnership learning communities
- 8. Designing institutional structures, strategies, and practices that promote inclusive and sustainable SSPs Develop structures and promote organizational changes that support staff in creating SSPs Provide opportunities and expectations for students to engage in SSPs Advocate, celebrate, recognise, and reward SSPs Promote inclusive and sustainable SSPs Integrate SSPs into learning and teaching initiatives, validation and review processes, and curriculum design projects
- 9. Building the capacity of students, staff, andADs by focusing on relationships • Support students and staff to reflect on their emotions as they navigate the messiness and complexity of SSPs • Provide reassurance for SSP participants and others unconvinced of its value • Create safe spaces for dialogue between students and staff to unfold over time recognising individual contributions to the partnership • Provide mentoring and training workshops for SSP participants including a focus on building trust • Recognise the tension between SSPs philosophies and neoliberal discourses.
- 10. Researching and evaluating SSP experiences and outcomes Build in peer-review evaluation to SSP initiatives Explore the experiences and measure the outcomes of SSPs Survey existing SSP practices Promote findings through presentations, publications and social media
- 11. Framework We propose a framework (Figure 2) that interprets the roles we have just discussed according to: How academic development functions within the institution, and who undertakes AD roles The nature of the SSPs The overall context in which the range of roles of ADs take place
- 12. Figure 2: A framework for academic developers initiating, developing, and supporting student-staff partnerships in learning and teaching in higher education
- 13. Conclusions The roles of ADs in SSPs are nuanced and context-dependent Over-generalisations should be avoided Some ADs may see this as additional work that takes them outside their comfort zone Working with students can also help mainstream ADs understand how they can support academics to become more student-centred
- 14. Conclusions We hope that this review will: stimulate significant conversations between ADs, students and staff that will contribute to a more holistic academic development be relevant not only for ADs working on SSPs but for all ADs
- 15. Any questions?