PLATO: a practice development approach to reconsidering student learning partnerships

Background: This article explores the use of a practice development approach to support nursing students’ engagement in learning partnerships in clinical practice settings. Aim: To reflect, using the model proposed by Rolfe and colleagues (2001), on the development of ‘PLATO’ – an educational tool to help nursing students explore their role in building learning partnerships in clinical settings. Conclusion: A practice development approach to clinical learning partnerships can support an effective learning culture. As a result, nursing students can gain greater empowerment and take increased responsibility for their learning. Implications for practice: • Facilitating learning partnerships with students is important for achieving person-centred care • Partnership working provides opportunities for true collaboration and for learning with and from our students • Developing collaborative spaces can facilitate nursing students to reflect in and on their practice

Agency through partnership in neurodiverse college learning communities

This article examines the work of creating collaborative learning partnerships that fully include students with intellectual disabilities. The article reviews the scholarship of partnership as a starting point in discussing learning environments that support students with significant intellectual disabilities—a group that has only recently been encouraged to enroll in colleges and universities. The authors—a faculty member and two former undergraduate mentors in the University Studies program at Portland State University—offer reflections on their time partnering as facilitators of courses that include students with intellectual disabilities. They then analyze those reflections in relation to the scholarship of partnership and special education. The article presents evidence that the partnership approach to learning is more fully realized through intentional investment in universal design for learning principles and extended support networks invested in collaboration and interpersonal relationship. These approaches effectively bring students with disabilities into the center of educational environments and maintain their agency in shaping their learning communities.

Becoming Globally Competent Through Inter-School Reciprocal Learning Partnerships: An Inquiry Into Canadian and Chinese Teachers’ Narratives

This study explores how a Canada–China Sister School Network provides school-based professional learning opportunities for in-service teachers to grow their knowledge and capacity to educate for global competence and citizenship (GCC). In particular, it presents the story of a Canadian teacher and a Chinese teacher who had found ways of educating for GCC through carrying out intercultural and international reciprocal learning in a researcher-supported inter-school reciprocal learning partnership. By inquiring into the Canadian and Chinese teachers’ growth narratives, this study highlights four lessons teachers, educators/researchers, and policy makers may learn from the two teachers. It concludes by highlighting the potential of a relationship-oriented, open-ended, and non-hierarchical international school network in supporting teachers to become more globally competent, foregrounding reciprocal learning and collaboration among school practitioners and researchers.

Interim findings from the Uni Connect Raising Higher Education Aspirations evaluation in Lincolnshire

This short article summarises the evaluation findings from the end of Year 1 Phase 2 Uni Connect Raising Higher Education Aspirations project in Lincolnshire. This national initiative, funded by the Office for Students, delivers targeted Higher Education outreach activities to young people in Years 9 to 13 in areas where the Higher Education participation of young people is much lower than expected based on GCSE-level attainment. These areas often coincide with where universities focus their widening participation efforts to help them meet their Access and Participation Plans. In Lincolnshire the project is managed and delivered by LiNCHigher, one of 29 local learning partnerships involved in the project nationally. The data were collected between March and July 2020 during the Covid-19 national lockdown when all schools were closed and draws primarily on data collected from six case study schools. Evaluation activity comprised an online student activity survey, semi-structured interviews with School and College Leads, LiNCHigher Area Engagement Officers and two student focus groups, conducted just prior to lockdown in early March. The evaluation found that, prior to Covid-19, interventions were beginning to have a positive impact on the Higher Education aspirations of all students and that schools both welcomed and valued the initiative highly. The evaluation report made several recommendations, including ensuring workshops are more interactive.

Book Review--Undergraduate Research Abroad: Approaches, Models, and Challenges

The strength of Undergraduate Research Abroad: Approaches, Models, and Challenges ed Kate H. Patch and Louis M. Berends lies in the organization of the text and heterogeneous approach in considering international research by undergraduates, making the work valuable to faculty and administrators regardless of their level of experience in this area. Central themes are student learning, partnerships, faculty collaborations, mentorship, trust, quality, ethics, and preparation.

Interprofessional research on the inclusion of young children with developmental disabilities as they transition from preschool to elementary school

This paper is submitted in response to the call for papers on inclusion. Despite recognition of the importance of parent and interprofessional collaboration to enable meaningful inclusion outcomes for young children with developmental disabilities in education contexts, limited research has investigated how parents, educators and healthcare providers actually collaborate to support inclusion goals. Moreover, research has not examined inclusion from the diverse perspectives of stakeholders across early childhood, healthcare, and education sectors. This paper describes the work of HELPS Inc, a Canadian research project describing Health, Education, and Learning Partnerships Promoting Social Inclusion of young children with developmental disabilities.