Collaboration between staff and students in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: The potential and the problems

Abstract

Collaboration is identified as a key feature of pedagogic action research (see Norton, 2009), which is often a core part of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) methodology. Despite this, there appear to be few articles which explore experiences of collaborative partnerships within SoTL. This paper is a personal reflective essay which critically examines the extent to which ‘collaboration’ occurred in a SoTL project designed to explore staff and student use of technology (Allin, Turnock & Thompson, 2011). I critically reflect on the nature of student involvement throughout the project and question whether true collaboration between staff and students can ever be achieved due to the power relations that exist within the current higher education system (Mann, 2001). Developing effective collaborations between students and lecturers matters for SoTL practice, as such collaborations have the potential to transform teaching and learning in Higher Education, and develop further our understanding of learning (Werder & Otis, 2009).