The document discusses the 'students as partners' project aimed at enriching the academic curriculum by addressing the limitations of cultural diversity and promoting authentic engagement between students and lecturers. It highlights findings that indicate a Eurocentric curriculum and the need for a more inclusive approach, recommending the inclusion of diverse perspectives and engagement methods. The presentation also raises questions about the dynamics of power and participation in educational settings, emphasizing the importance of authentic dialogue and the recognition of different identities.

1. STUDENTS AS PARTNERS:
DILEMMAS OF DIVERSITY
AND INCLUSION
Parminder Assi, Rukshana Begum,Maria Bi,
Iain Jones, Richard Sanders, Nasrat
Shaheen and Roger Willoughby
Newman University, Birmingham
Teaching and Learning Conference
16 January 2015.

2. Presentation and themes
 Introduction
and rationale
 The Students as
Partners Project
 Emerging
questions and
dilemmas
 What next?
 References
 Spaces for
engagement
 Curriculum
enrichment
 Dilemmas

3. Questions for discussion
How do students engage with lecturers as
partners to enrich the curriculum?
How do lecturers engage with students as
partners to enrich the curriculum?
What are the possibilities for developing
and embedding this work further?

4. ENGAGEMENT AND
ENRICHMENT
Maria, Nasrat and Rukshana

5. Students as Partners
Why did we get involved?
o Limited cultural diversity explored within
curriculum taught: content, resources and
lectures
o Create a project based on our specific choice
of enriching the curriculum
o Opportunity to become active students &
share ideas
o Learn & experience new ways to enrich the
current curriculum
o Collaboratively work with lecturers
o Leave a legacy – try and make a change

6. SaP - Methods
 We used three different methods in
collecting our data
 The first was questionnaire – 55
participants
 One semi-structured interview
 One focus group – involving 3 participants
 All data categorised into ethnic groups
and analysed

7. SaP - Findings
 Curriculum was relatively Eurocentric
 High proportion of students from ethnic
minorities felt that the curriculum could be
more culturally inclusive as there is an
absence of work explored from other
continents such as 'Africa' and 'Asia‘
 Include local, national and international
academics and scholars from different
ethnic backgrounds .

8. SaP - Findings
 Students enjoyed the free rein on choosing
topics for assessments
 No difference between the delivery of
lecture and seminar
 Repetitive use of PowerPoint
 Include more opportunity for debate and
discussion

9. SaP - Recommendations
 Diversify the theorists and theories to gain
multiple perspectives
 Include the ideas of Black and Asian thinkers
and academics from local, global, past and
present much earlier on in the modules.
 Include the concept of multiple identities,
especially religious identity across the modules
from level 4
 Topics and themes on the underachievement of
minority ethnics could be explored through the
concept of Intersectionality, which if introduced
at level 4 can be interwoven into the curriculum
across the modules

10. ENGAGEMENT AND
ENRICHMENT
Iain and Richard

11. Spaces for authentic engagement
and curriculum enrichment?
 Why did we get involved?
 What do we mean by ‘authenticity’?
 Contrasting opportunities to develop and
enrich curriculum, degree and modules
 Comparison between MEQ and SSC – and
their limitations- and developing and
sustaining dialogue with students within
and outside of the curriculum

12. ‘The performative self’ and ‘authentic
self’ MacKenzie et al (2007:47)
Argue performativity and authenticity are two
different dimensions of identity.
‘the performative self’ is both created and then
confined by and within institutional regulations.
‘the authentic self’ may recognise demands and
act knowingly and mindfully in response to them.
Recurring tension between the two:
A starting point in understanding and re-asserting a
sense of professional purpose?

13. Conditions and spaces for authentic
engagement ?
How can we encourage a greater authentic engagement with students?
How can we connect this to conceptual tools that will be useful for unpacking
this problem?
 Students’ Embodied Capital (Bourdieu, 1986) -
Academic, Cultural, Social: to realise authentic engagement and
participation in curriculum enrichment within Newman. How far can we
encourage perspectives that go past the performative self?
 What shifts are needed in a continuum of strongly and weakly
bounded subject areas (Bernstein, 1999) to enable authentic
participation? These features can define what is seen as possible – helps
with looking past what is perceived as important within functionalist
performative realities
 What opportunities are created within macro neoliberal and
neoconservative discourses? (Ball, 2013) How do we discursively
recognise these (Wodak & Meyer, 2009)? – Students as Partners is an
example where authentic participation can be realised from consumerist
discourses.

14. Spaces for engagement ?
‘Performative
Self’
‘Authentic
Self’

15. Student ‘voice’ (Fielding, 2001),
performativity and authenticity:
Possible spaces for engagement?
‘Student
voice’
Data
sources
Active
respondents
Co-
researcher
Researchers

16. Space for learning and
enrichment?
To be an act of knowing... demands
among teachers and students a
relationship of authentic dialogue. True
dialogue unites subjects together in the
cognition of a knowable object, which
mediates between them... learners
must assume from the beginning the
role of creative subjects
(Freire, 1985:49, my emphasis).

17. Pedagogy of relationships and listening
( Fielding and Moss, 2011)?
the question of Access must be inverted:
it is not only a question of access of the
excluded into universities, it is also a
question of access of universities into
the knowledge of the excluded
(Shanahan, 1997:71)
SaP project provides a space and
starting point for exploring these
questions

18. Questions and dilemmas:
Our learning from students
What are we learning?
Deepening understanding of ‘othering’ and
essentialising
Possible dilemmas
How can high level of engagement be
embedded?
How can engagement be reproduced and
sustained with other students?

19. ‘Students as Partners’ and
institutional power
the difficult question of whether the
optimism enshrined in empowerment as a
concept produces a rather uncritical view
of the entrenched, hierarchical power
relations.... If it does, then student voice
activities may unfortunately result in re-
inscribing hegemonic power relations and
reducing those activities to tokenistic
intervention
Taylor and Robinson, 2009:166

20. DILEMMAS AND
EMERGING ISSUES
Parminder & Roger

21. Convergences of content and process
 A spotlight on cultural range of curriculum
 Limited reflection, recognition and positive affirmation
of BME groups
 The potential impact of these failures
 BME and some white British student interest in
addressing these lacunae through extending the
curriculum and its delivery beyond that of the
traditional Western (British) educational canon and
allied theorists

22. Convergences of content and
process
 Inter-related process issues of
engagement between students and staff,
particularly around preconceived notions
of – among other things - roles,
boundaries, expertise, dominance,
inclusion/exclusion, vulnerability, and
shame
 Dialectical issues around conceptualising
the Other and space

23. Some ingredients of learning contexts
Learning
context
Texts &
materials
Politics
&
ideology
Race &
culture
Institution
Academic
staff
Students

24. Recognition and Space
 We previously noted MacKenzie et al’s
(2007) ideas on performative and authentic
aspects of the self and the earlier
epistemological emphasis by Freire (1985)
on ‘authentic dialogue’ in process of coming
to know. We want to now take this
synthesis of ideas further forward…
 We shall do so by going backwards…

25. Hegel and the master-slave dialectic
 Hegel (1807) crucially clarified the dialectical
processes involved in recognising the Other,
recognising their not-me subjectivity. Such
recognition is vital to the emergence of self-
consciousness, a process also aided by the
recognition of the (often externalised) products of
one’s labour and creativity.
 More explicitly in terms of education, typically
conceptualised as Bildung, Hegel analogously argued
that this requires self development in response to
conflict and frustration (Wood, 1998)
 These arguments profoundly influenced Marx, Buber,
de Beauvoir, Lacan, Fanon, and others

26. Winnicott and space
 ‘I have introduced the terms 'transitional
object' and 'transitional phenomena' for
designation of the intermediate area of
experience, between the thumb and the
teddy bear, between the oral erotism and
true object-relationship, between primary
creative activity and projection of what has
already been introjected, between primary
unawareness of indebtedness and the
acknowledgement of indebtedness ('Say:
ta!')’ (Winnicott, 1953, p. 89).

27. Winnicott and space
‘This intermediate area of experience,
unchallenged in respect of its belonging to
inner or external (shared) reality,
constitutes the greater part of the infant's
experience and throughout life is retained
in the intense experiencing that belongs to
the arts and to religion and to imaginative
living, and to creative scientific work’
(Winnicott, 1953, p. 97).

28. Potential space
 These ideas offer a model
for relating, for pedagogy,
the setting for which is both
intra and inter-mental, that
flourishes within potential
space, fed by both inner
reality and external life.
 The paradox (dilemma) of
the process, DWW suggest,
needs to be accepted and
tolerated rather than
resolved

29. Physical and mental spaces
Inter-subjective
space
Public or
social
Physical
space
Institutional
Intra-
psychic
space
Private

30. Questions and comments
 How do you engage the Other and
how does the Other engage you?
 How can we best encourage
disengagement from students?
 Thank you.

31. Conclusion:
Our reflections on question
Students as Partners
 Maria , Nasrat and Rukshana . Each
choose particular aspect of the project
that been particularly important for you?
Lecturers as Partners
 Iain, Richard, Roger and Parminder. Each
choose particular aspect of the project
that been particularly important for us?

32. What next?
Enriching curriculum of
 Level 5 Research Methods
 Level 6 Learning Journeys II
 Level 6 Praxis- check title

33. References
Fielding, M. (2001) Students as radical agents of change,
Journal of Educational Change, 2, 123-141.
Fielding,M. and Moss,P. (2011) Radical Education and the
Common School: A Democratic Alternative. Abingdon:
Routledge.
Freire, P. (1985) The Politics of Education: Culture, Power and
Liberation.New York: Bergin and Garvey.
Hegel, G W F (1807) The Phenomenology of Spirit. New York: OUP, 1979
Mac Kenzie, H., Mc Shane, K., and Wilcox, S. (2007) Challenging
Performative Fabrication: Seeking authenticity in academic
development practice, International Journal of Academic
Development, 12:1, 45-54.

34. References
Northedge, A. (2003) Rethinking Teaching in the Context of
Diversity, Teaching in Higher Education, 8:1, 17-32.
Northedge, A. (2003) Enabling Participation in Academic Discourse,
Teaching in Higher Education, 8:2, 169-180.
Shenahan, P. (1997) Re-defining University Access for the excluded
in a knowledge society. In S. Hill and B. Merrill (eds) Access,
Equity, Participation and Organisational Change. Department of
Continuing Education, University of Warwick, University
Catholique de Louvain and ESREA.
Taylor , C. and Robinson , C. (2009) Student voice: theorising power
and Participation, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 17:2, 161-175.

35. References
Winnicott, D W (1953). ‘Transitional Objects and Transitional
Phenomena—A Study of the First Not-Me Possession’,
International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 34:89-97
Wood, A W (1998). ‘Hegel on Education’, in A O Rorty (ed)
Philosophy as Education, London: Routledge (available online
at: web.stanford.edu/~allenw/webpapers/HegelEd.doc).