Session Information
27 SES 01 B, Philosophical Perspective on Teaching and Learning
Paper Session
Contribution
This paper focuses on the ethical dimension of student engagement through partnership in learning and teaching practices. Specifically, it engages the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and Jacques Ranciere’s concept of dissensus to offer a critical exploration of the values, principles and practices of student engagement through partnership.
The paper argues that engagement through partnership is a complex affair. On the one hand, engagement through partnership is often said to open up new ways of working with students, new modes of learning and teaching, and have the potential to transformation oneself, one's relations with others and, in some cases, bring about organisational change. On the other hand, student engagement through partnership is often a messy, complex, contested and contestable practice, marked by ethical tensions, role conflicts and power relations. The paper addresses two questions. The first question is an ethical one: How can we forge a link between ethical principles and the practical matters of making particular partnerships happen and work in a particular situation? The second question is a theoretical one: what theoretical resources does Whitehead’s (1978) process philosophy and Ranciere’s (2006) concept of dissensus offer in understanding student engagement through partnership? The paper focuses on these two questions in order to cast a critical gaze on the concept of partnership learning communities, to appraise what it might mean in practice to work with a notion of ‘process not outcome’ in partnership practices, and to critically consider the extent to which student engagement through partnership can realize its goal to benefit all who participate.
Collaborative practices, dialogic approaches, and co-created curriculum processes continue to be at the heart of many educators’ approaches to learning and teaching. Despite ever-increasing pressures towards marketisation, competition, individualization and instrumentalism, lecturers and students in many international higher education contexts continue to place a high value on the quality of relationships, on shared values, and on learning and working together as a mutual endeavour. In this paper, I address the ethical issues that may arise when considering student engagement through partnership as a relational, social and communitarian enterprise. In particular, I address the fact that partnership learning communities often contain tensions arising from issues of power, differences in equality of opportunity for engagement and participation, and diversity in experience and perspectives. I consider how those involved in student engagement through partnership bring with them different educational histories, learning biographies and political investments which means that they engage in partnership from different bases and interpret and enact the values and principles which underpin partnership in complex and often differing ways. I deploy Ranciere’s (2010) rethinking of ‘politics’ via the concept of dissensus to argue that ‘resolving’ conflicts of interest are not simply about finding common ground to include the excluded but about coming together to create new ways of being, that go beyond personal interests by installing the political in the place of that which is presumed not to be political. Crucially, and this is where Whitehead’s (1978) process philosophy is useful, I argue that we need to conceptualise student engagement through partnership as a dynamic and always emergent process-practice of co-creation but one in which any harmony is valued as a temporarily achieved state, and one which (necessarily) entails exclusion.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Guillemin, M. and Gillam, L. (2004) Ethics, reflexivity, and “ethically important moments” in Research. Qualitative Inquiry, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 261-280. Healey, M., Flint, A. and Harrington, K. (2014) Engagement through partnership: Students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education. York: Higher Education Academy. HEA (2015) Framework for student engagement through partnership. York: Higher Education Academy. Ranciere, J. (2010) Dissensus: On politics and aesthetics. London: Continuum. Swim, S., St George, S. and Wulff, D. (2001) Process ethics: A collaborative partnership. Journal of Systemic Therapies, Winter, pp. 14-25. Taylor, C. (2015) A guide to ethics and student engagement through partnership. York: Higher Education Academy. Taylor, C. and Bovill, C. (forthcoming) Towards an ecology of participation: Relational ethics and co-construction of higher education curricula. Invited paper for special issue on didactics, European Educational Research Journal. Taylor, C and Robinson, C. (2014) “What matters in the end is to act well”: Student engagement and ethics. In: Understanding and developing student engagement: Perspectives from universities and students, ed. C. Bryson, London: Routledge. pp. 161-175. Whitehead, A. N. (1978) Process and reality. New York: Free Press.
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