Inclusive, multi-partner co-creation for the teaching of special educational needs and disabilities in higher education

Co-creation of curriculum content is a growing priority across Higher Education and, while many projects stress the market benefits to institutions and students, this research instead focussed on promoting inclusion, social justice and anti-oppressive practice, with theoretical underpinnings in the social model of disability. This joint research project between staff and students at De Montfort University (DMU), Leicester, led to the co-creation of a Level 6 SEND module on the BA Education Studies programme. The co-designed research explores how the experiences of neurodivergent people, those with SEND, their families and practitioners, can inform teaching practices and module specifications at undergraduate level in Education Studies. Qualitative data, collected via questionnaires, focus groups and interviews with students, parents, practitioners and academics, revealed rich, diverse perspectives on the knowledge and understanding that future educators need, as well as the most inclusive methods for teaching and assessing that knowledge. The practice-based implications of the research included co-creation of a Level 6 SEND module which recognises value in ‘non-professional’ voices and embeds anti-oppressive practice in its design, delivery and assessment.

Editorial: Collaboration in higher education: Partnering with students, colleagues and external stakeholders

Welcome to this Special Issue of the Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice (JUTLP). This editorial provides an overview of Collaboration in Higher Education. Humans are social, inter-dependent beings, needing to be and communicate with each other. Being with other people provides an opportunity to grow and develop, creating a sense of self and identity. Together we construct, structure and restructure the stories that build the larger narratives of who we are, what we do and how we live, act and behave as people, professionals and larger communities. It is through our collaborations that we come together, and construct meaning and ourselves. As Higher Education continues to exclude and sideline, as it constrains and removes spaces and places for collaboration between service staff, faculty and students within institutions, between institutions, and with other stakeholders, there is a need to rediscover the power of collaboration. The articles included, build on practical experience, research data, personal and collective reflections, to outline how the contributors have navigated this tension to create spaces of voice and hope. Presented are case studies that are boundary crossing: across disciplinary boundaries; cross-institution collaboration; cross-boundary working; pedagogical co-creation and the re-conceptualising of learning; and students as partners, co-researchers and co-authors. Together they showcase refreshed notions of collegiality and collaboration in Higher Education that support new and more nuanced, and dynamic models of co-creation. We hope the Special Issue helps seed an ecology of collaborative practice for social justice – a more humane academia.

“To be relied upon and trusted”: The centrality of personal relationships to collaboration in HE, in a successful cross-team institutional change project

The change to online delivery in March 2020 provided an opportunity as well as a requirement to change the way we work in Higher Education (HE), from a traditional stance focussed on hierarchy and roles to one that embraced individual core skills and competencies. The Transformation Academy (TA), Solent University's response led by the Solent Learning and Teaching Institute (SLTI), had as its goal the preparation of 1100 modules for online delivery in September 2020, delivered via institutional cross-team collaboration to ensure success within a narrow timescale. Collaboration is by necessity situated and dialogic, and most effectively driven by an affective and trust-based connection between collaborative partners as well as to the project goal. In bringing together previously disparate and siloed teams, the TA project’s success relied upon new collaborative partners quickly forming those connections, despite the prevailing neoliberal emphasis in UK HE on performativity and pressure from senior management to complete the work within 12 weeks. Adopting a qualitative empirical research design and single, local, exploratory case study approach, data is derived from 11 semi-structured interviews with project members who collaborated with colleagues outside of their usual team structures, to explore the personal value they perceived obtaining from the TA project. Preliminary findings suggest that Learning and Teaching (L&T) collaborations in a pressured environment benefit from authenticity in emotion and interpersonal affective connections, which in turn are engendered by openness and clarity in communication, a flattened hierarchy, and a sense of ownership for all participants.

Beyond the avatar: Using video cameras to achieve effective collaboration in an online second language classroom

In language learning, students learn through interaction with the teacher, the other students, and with the study material, to build language skills. What happens to interaction opportunities when learning goes online? In an online classroom, collaboration is difficult to achieve due to lack of physical proximity among the participants. This paper explores the problem of online collaboration between teachers and students in English as Foreign Language (EFL) classroom with the empirical focus on the role that video cameras play in online collaboration. We argue that cameras, although being contested as a pedagogical tool, should be seen as an important ‘proximity tool’ that helps foster collaboration by bringing learners and teachers ‘closer’. We theorise ‘collaboration’ via the social constructivism lens and argue that collaboration as being ‘close’ echoes in the digital sense with ‘being with’ and is core for developing an ecology of virtual collaboration. We draw on the online survey data from foreign language students and language instructors in one Russian research-intensive university, who were asked how they use cameras online. Quantitative and qualitative methods of data analysis have been used to identify key patterns and emerging themes. The key findings of the study are that 1) cameras could be an important aspect of fostering collaboration online; 2) there is a tension in relationships between students, teachers, and study materials; 3) students and teachers differently perceive the need to use cameras, which may limit opportunities for online collaboration; and 4) while students feel more comfortable when all the other participants turn their cameras on, many do not see turning cameras on for themselves to be important. The paper concludes with a discussion of how camera use can foster online collaboration between teachers and students.

Learning how to engage with another's point of view by intercultural, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaborations

The paper argues that the different dimensions of collaboration - intercultural, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary - contribute to mutual understanding and empathy. Their intersection fosters self-reflection and reveals shortcomings, blind spots, and prejudices about other cultures, disciplines, and social groups. The course aimed to overcome technology-driven design practices that tend to (re)produce stereotypes or social exclusions - often unconsciously. To make students aware of such problems, we introduced them to Feminist Science and Technology Studies, which show how dimensions such as age, class, and gender affect socio-technological participation. Moreover, we introduced user-centered and participatory design methods (contextual interviews, scenario-based design, design forecasting) that the teams had to adapt to pandemic conditions to conduct participatory research and propose design scenarios. The empirical course evaluation by the students indicates that the pedagogical concept, which we conceptualized as an extended version of a 'Third Space', allowed for intercultural, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary learning experiences and improved collective student and team performance, transcending culturally- and disciplinary-specific situatedness. In our analysis, we reflect on the power of the different forms of collaborations and their contribution to teaching future researchers, designers, and engineers how to engage with another's point of view. We consider this ability a prerequisite for acting responsibly in a globalized digital world. Results from the study are contextualized in current debates on internationalization and digitalization in the educational sciences and translated into recommendations for practitioners.

Dancing with power in ‘We are the university: Students co-creating change’

Much of the student-staff partnership literature calls for increased collaboration and power sharing among staff and students. Less common are accounts by student partners themselves that take up the challenge of what partnership and power feel like as universities embrace their neoliberal trajectory - and - purport to do so on behalf of students themselves. Especially acute is the conundrum of how partnership initiatives can, and do, reproduce the very power dynamics they set out to transform. We are a group of students and staff working in curriculum partnership together at Western Sydney University. The context of our work together is the 21C project, a university-wide strategy to transform curriculum, teaching, and learning, drawing on ‘partnership pedagogy’. In this paper, we engage in a process of reflexive inquiry to interrogate a new elective unit that many of us are involved in as advocates, co-creators, as students and staff learning together, and as evaluators, called We are the university: Students co-creating change (WATU). To highlight partnership’s intricate power plays, we offer a fictionalised account to reflect our multi-voiced experiences of being involved in WATU. We have come to understand power’s simultaneity in partnership as forms of power over, as permission-giving, as sharing (or partnership), and as the power to act (agency). The account is our story of partnership’s inevitable contradictions - a collaboration that teaches us about the challenges of working together while being cautious of partnership’s transformatory claims.

Ensemble mentorship as a decolonising and relational practice in Canada

Inspired by collaborating on a shared vision of reconciliation, three authors explore ethical relationality and the practical ways in which their heterarchical ensemble mentorship serves to decolonise and advance a shared vision of reconciliation for university teaching and learning. As Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators, we are buoyed by those developing decolonising and Indigenising strategies in formerly colonised regions. Seen as a promising interruption to a neoliberal approach to education, the authors embrace the possibilities of imagining and creating an ethical space in universities where relationality is prioritised in service of social justice. While the complex nature of reconciliation within a Canadian context begets tension and highlights what are often conflicting value systems within academe, we maintain that innovations in teaching and learning are possible in what is now a globally disrupted terrain as students, faculty, administrators, and university leadership contend with the unknown, encounter collectivist Indigenous traditions, and tentatively explore decolonisation as an ethical avenue towards inclusive and empowering education. In imagining what is possible, we build upon Indigenous knowledge traditions and the work of leadership studies scholars to propose 'ensemble mentorship' between students and faculty as a collaborative and decolonising teaching and learning practice.

De-territorialisations for pedagogical co-creation: Challenging traditionalistic pedagogies with students in higher education

The notion of pedagogy tends to be understood as the domain of teachers, this is a reductive way of thinking about pedagogy. Instead, in this paper I explore the heteroglossia of pedagogy through the Deleuzian-Guattarian notion of assemblage. Through this approach, pedagogy is an open debate which needs to involve students to co-create the learning environment in Higher Education (HE). Drawing on data collected with first year undergraduate students and through an action research methodological approach, I will argue that collaborative and progressive pedagogies in HE must go beyond the authority of the teacher and offer students in-class opportunities to negotiate the usual power relationships that characterise traditionalistic pedagogies. Whilst there is a stronger emphasis on engaging students differently in HE, it is important to also reflect on the dynamics that emerge from initiatives that seek to redress the pedagogical imbalances that the traditionalistic classroom perpetuates, such as enforcing a prescriptive curriculum where knowledge is transferable, inert and closely policed to satisfy performative regimes of assessment. I suggest that the notion of assemblages can help us understand the solidified and accepted classroom pedagogies as territories which are still normative in education, including HE, therefore, mapping out these territories open up possibilities for de-territorialisations.

Knowing me, Knowing you: Humanitas in work-integrated learning during adversity

Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) is a variety of learning opportunities that can extend beyond the application of theory to practice, to include complex situational, personal, material, and organisational factors. Central to forming successful WIL experiences is the partnership, support, and collaboration extended by all key stakeholders. The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted WIL experiences, with many developed partnerships and sustained practices being abruptly impacted. In 2020, a multidisciplinary group of Australasian WIL academics, administrators and students joined in weekly virtual coffee chats to share concerns and experiences during this rapidly changing educational landscape. These conversations led to establishing a Small Significant Online Network Group (SSONG) and became the basis for this article. We explored the lessons learned from WIL practitioners to be better informed of the practice of WIL and, generally, to examine the role of collaborations in higher education. Using a collaborative autoethnographic approach, this study incorporated written reflections on WIL experiences during COVID-19 lockdowns, followed by Zoom conversations to gain deeper insights. All data was aggregated and analysed thematically, both inductively and deductively, to interpret the practice experiences of individuals in their socio-cultural contexts. This article intends to demonstrate how creative solutions, such as adopting a HUMANE framework, become valuable paradigms. These enhance and nurture relationships between all WIL stakeholders, to enrich and sustain WIL experiences for all.

Emerging from the third space chrysalis: Experiences in a non-hierarchical, collaborative research community of practice

This article discusses the creation of a research-focused virtual community of practice (vCoP) for geographically-dispersed third space professionals, motivated by desires for enhanced professional collaboration, visibility and identity. The authors used collaborative autoethnography (CAE) to evaluate their personal reflections as vCoP participants. Data were gathered in two collaborative writing activities and analysed using thematic analysis (TA). The TA identified two connected themes, which capture the vCoP members’ aspirations to transcend their current roles and be research-active through connecting with like-minded professionals. Collaborative writing activities, including authoring this paper, cultivated elements of academic identity such as independence and purpose. A non-hierarchical and supportive vCoP environment allowed the members to work beyond time and institutional constraints to foster the evolution of the community and an emerging sense of professional identity beyond that typically associated with third space roles. The paper offers a model of collaboration that could help groups in similar situations.