The possibility of pedagogical partnership: Co-creating teaching and learning through a Singapore cultural lens

Abstract

Student-staff partnership practices aim to reduce the power differentials between students and educators to create authentic and meaningful collaborations. In Asian universities where examples of pedagogical are less widely reported (Carless & Kwan, 2019), scholars have posited that cultural norms have created hierarchical education systems and widened the power distance that may pose a barrier to authentic partnerships (Carless & Kwan, 2019). Liang and Matthews (2021) have recently reported how Chinese teachers have placed high levels of importance on student-staff partnerships and further suggested that the underlying cultural beliefs could instead facilitate partnerships. However, such experiences that connect culture to the willingness to co-create teaching and learning activities are rarely documented (Liang & Matthews, 2021).

We are two colleagues who differ in disciplinary background, career history and are at different stages in our careers but we have an important thing in common – we both believe in active student engagement in service of student learning. In this reflective essay, we wish to develop an active dialogue about partnership, between ourselves, where we undertake to reflect together as partners by developing a conversation in teaching and learning. Based on our experience in co-creating partnership opportunities with students in teaching and research, our dialogue aims to examine our cultural beliefs and how they have influenced our thinking, approach, challenges, reservations, attitudes and intentions towards partnership with students. As we reflect on our dialogue, we hope to evolve a view of students-staff partnership that keeps an open-mind towards the possibilities and potential of working with and alongside others, such that we enrich our thinking and practice in teaching and learning. In our reflection, we will take into consideration some of the established work that has already been done on the student-staff partnership front (e.g. Bovill, 2017; Healey, Flint, & Harrington, 2016; Cook-Sather, Bovill, &  Felten, 2014), to name just a few. We hope that this dialogic format will engender possibilities of partnership and/or possible pathways of overcoming barriers in our context.