Listening to equity-seeking perspectives: how students’ experiences of pedagogical partnership can inform wider discussions of student success

Abstract

Discussions in higher education have proliferated in recent years regarding not only how to recruit a greater diversity of students but also how to support their success. The voices of students themselves, particularly those students traditionally underrepresented in and underserved by higher education, have important contributions to make to these discussions. This article draws on a larger study of the perspectives of undergraduate students who identify as members of equity-seeking groups (e.g., students who are racialized, LGBTQ+ and first generation) and who have collaborated with faculty in a bi-college, classroom-focused, pedagogical partnership program in the United States. Using constant comparison/grounded theory, I analyzed these students’ responses to a question about how participating in this program affected their sense of themselves as students. The themes that emerged across students’ responses included how participation in pedagogical partnership (1) fosters important affective experiences in relation to all faculty and to fellow students, (2) informs students’ academic engagement in their own classes and (3) contributes to students’ sense of their evolution as active agents in their own and others’ development. Both affirming and expanding established understandings of what contributes to student success presented in the literature on belonging, engagement and persistence, these themes have implications for how we might support the success of a diversity of students both within and beyond formal pedagogical partnership.

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