Rethinking the problem of faculty resistance to engaging with students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education

Authors

Kelly E. Matthews, The University of QueenslandFollow

Abstract

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.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Matthews, Kelly E. (2019) "Rethinking the problem of faculty resistance to engaging with students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education," International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Vol. 13: No. 2, Article 2.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2019.130202