Resisting Hierarchy and Harm and Centering Humanity in Higher Education

A Review of Co-creating Equitable Teaching and Learning: Structuring Student Voice into Higher Education

Abstract

It is rare to have experienced the phenomena described in a book—not just in the abstract, but literally. That is case for me with Co-creating Equitable Teaching and Learning: Structuring Student Voice into Higher Education by Alison Cook-Sather. As previewed in chapter 1 and elaborated in chapter 5, the book is guided by an overarching principle to support partnership in education among students, staff, faculty, and institutional leaders in pursuit of equity, agency, and resistance to white supremacy culture. The book offers three sub-principles: be guided by a commitment to equity (chapter 2); provide structures, not prescriptions, for engagement (chapter 3); and make rather than take up space for learning and growth (chapter 4). Each chapter integrates student-authored vignettes of student experiences and works through how the focal principle plays out at the course, program, and institutional levels. The foreword and afterword are written by recent undergraduates who participated in one or more of the co-creation efforts analyzed in the book.

Writing from the perspective of a rising senior at Bryn Mawr College, I can attest to the ways that course-, program-, and institutional-level co-creation can make space for learning, growth, and support for students like me and many others. In the spring-2023 semester, I completed the undergraduate education course Cook-Sather uses as her focal example. During the 2022-2023 academic year, as well as the 2023-2024 academic year, I served as a pedagogical consultant to a faculty member through the Students as Learners and Teachers (SaLT) program Cook-Sather uses as an example of programmatic co-creation. And since spring of 2022, I co-facilitated Pedagogy Circles for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, one of the examples of inter-institutional forums Cook-Sather describes at the institutional level of co-creation.