Keynote Session: Reimagining the Place of Students in Educational Development

Many educational developers have become champions of partnering with students. A 2016 special issue of the International Journal for Academic Development, for instance, featured emerging partnership practices and research from half a dozen countries. Taking this movement one step further, an influential publication from the UK’s Higher Education Academy – authored by prominent developers – contends that “engaging students and staff effectively as partners in learning and teaching is arguably one of the most important issues facing higher education in the 21st century” (Healey, Flint, and Harrington 2014, p. 7).

In this interactive session, we will critically explore the purposes and practices of partnering with students in educational development. Many partnership initiatives insert a few students into an ongoing program or initiative. This approach often enriches the experiences of and outcomes for all involved, but does it go far enough to enact the values of partnership and to counter the consumerist forces shaping higher education? What if we reimagine the place of students in educational development? This session is an invitation for developers, reflecting on their own distinct contexts, to consider why and how students could be allies and agents in “the creation of conditions supportive of teaching and learning, in the broadest sense” (Leibowitz, 2014, p. 3).