Elizabeth Marquis

Navigating the threshold of student–staff partnerships: a case study from an Ontario teaching and learning institute

Abstract This article presents the results of research that examined the experiences of staff and students engaged in a novel ‘student scholars’ program established through a university teaching and learning institute in Ontario, Canada. Drawing from participant reflections and focus group data, we describe the benefits and challenges perceived by individuals partnering through this initiative, using the theoretical framework of threshold concepts to understand these experiences. We describe ways in which participants experienced partnering as both troublesome and – in some cases – transformative, and consider the implications of these findings for academic developers engaging in and/or supporting faculty with the process of partnering with students.

Responding to the challenges of student-staff partnership: the reflections of participants at an international summer institute

ABSTRACT This article contributes to the growing scholarly literature about students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education by describing an initiative designed to support partnership and a study investigating international staff and student perspectives. The initiative – an international summer institute – is a four-day, professional development experience that brought together students and staff from seven countries to learn about partnership and develop specific partnership projects. Participants in the institute were invited to contribute to a qualitative study exploring their experiences of students as partners work and their perceptions of the institute’s capacity to support it. Given that much existing research on this topic tends to be celebratory, we focus here on the challenges participants ascribed to student-staff partnership, and on the features of the summer institute they thought particularly useful in helping them to navigate these difficulties. Looking beyond the summer institute, we consider the implications of these findings for those looking to support partnership more broadly.

Fostering Collaborative Teaching and Learning Scholarship through an International Writing Group Initiative.

ABSTRACT The research presented here explored the experiences of participants in an international collaborative writing group (ICWG) initiative that ran in conjunction with the 2012 International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSoTL) conference. The ICWG sought to cultivate collaborative pedagogical scholarship by bringing together a range of international academics to co-author articles on teaching and learning topics of shared interest. Data were collected via online surveys at the beginning and end of the initiative and interim focus groups/interviews. In addition to suggesting that the ICWG is an effective means of fostering collaborative writing, the results point to a number of factors that might also influence collaboration in other contexts: modes of collaboration, opportunities for social dialogue, developing a shared vision and voice, and leadership. Implications and applications of the findings, as well as areas of further research, are discussed.

Conceptualizing documentary performance

ABSTRACT In discussions of non-fiction film-making, the issue of performance has often been given short shrift. This article begins to fill this gap by outlining a framework for understanding and discussing the documentary actors work. I contend that a three-tiered model, which takes into account everyday performative activity (tier #1), the impact of the camera (tier #2) and the influence of specific documentary film frameworks (tier #3), is necessary to describe the non-fiction subjects work effectively. This kind of multifaceted conception also suggests the necessity of a complex, interdisciplinary method of analysis. If one is to consider adequately the nature and implications of documentary ‘acting’, one must draw from and combine the insights of fields that investigate each of the performative levels that non-fiction subjects negotiate. By amalgamating the relevant work of sociologists and social psychologists, film acting scholars and documentary theorists, I enumerate many of the performance strategies and techniques available to non-fiction subjects and demonstrate a means of analysing these choices. Throughout, evidence from The Up Series (Apted, 1964–2005) is used to suggest the utility of such an approach.

Developing inclusive educators: enhancing the accessibility of teaching and learning in higher education

Abstract In light of the growing population of students with disabilities at colleges and universities worldwide, faculty development connected to accessible teaching is of paramount importance. Drawing from the existing literature and from the results of a qualitative study of educational accessibility at one Canadian university, this article offers a series of recommendations for academic developers hoping to establish effective development initiatives focused on accessible teaching and learning. Key issues considered include the need to support instructors in translating principles of inclusive teaching into practice, the value of discussion-based approaches that take up difficult questions about minimum standards, and the question of whether development initiatives should be discipline-specific or interdisciplinary, mandatory or optional. Recommendations for further research are also discussed.

We'll Always Have Bogart: Allusion, Nostalgia, and Critique in Play It Again, Sam

Abstract In a seminal essay, Noel Carroll posits two broad “uses of allusion” in postclassical American filmmaking. Although some films of the 1970s and 1980s cited earlier texts to critique the genres and ideologies of old Hollywood, Carroll suggests, others used intertextual allusion in a nostalgic, memorializing fashion. This article seeks to build on and complicate Carrolls conceptualization of intertextuality in American films of this era, analyzing Woody Allen and Herbert Rosss Play It Again, Sam (1972) to demonstrate that intertextual allusion, in some cases, might be at once deconstructive and nostalgic. Furthermore, this analysis leads to a consideration of the Humphrey Bogart star-persona as a figure of frequent postclassical citation.

Navigating complexity, culture, collaboration, and emotion: student perspectives on global justice and global justice education

ABSTRACT Recent years have seen increasing scholarly attention to the ways in which colleges and universities might contribute to educating ‘global citizens’ who work toward addressing injustice and inequity. The present study examines the experiences and perspectives of students participating in an upper level ‘global justice inquiry’ course designed to help meet this goal. Drawing from interviews with students and reflections submitted as part of their course assessment, we explore participants’ developing understanding of global justice and their experiences of learning about this topic. This investigation reveals key issues that students highlight and with which they sometimes struggle, including the complexity of global challenges, the importance of collaboration in attempting to address such challenges, the significance of navigating cultural considerations, and the potential influence of emotion on understanding and action. Implications of these findings, including the potential value of considering these issues as threshold concepts in global justice education, are discussed.

Growing partnership communities: What experiences of an international institute suggest about developing student-staff partnership in higher education

Abstract This article explores the perceptions of participants following the first International Summer Institute (SI) on students as partners in higher education, a four-day professional development experience designed to foster student-staff partnerships. Approximately 9 months after the Institute, 10 participants were interviewed to understand their perceptions of student-staff partnership, and what role the SI played in supporting partnership working. We discuss the key themes that emerged from our interviews, and analyse these participant responses in comparison to responses collected during the 2016 SI. In evaluating our data, we consider the general efficacy of the SI and offer ideas for academic developers interested in supporting partnership work more generally.

Toward theories of partnership praxis: an analysis of interpretive framing in literature on students as partners in teaching and learning

ABSTRACT A body of literature on students as partners (SaP) in higher education has emerged over the last decade that documents, shares, and evaluates SaP approaches. As is typical in emerging fields of inquiry, scholars differ regarding how they see the relationship between the developments in SaP practices and the theoretical explanations that guide, illuminate, and situate such practices. In this article we explore the relationship between theory and practice in SaP work through an analysis of interpretive framing employed in scholarship of SaP in teaching and learning in higher education. Through a conceptual review of selected publications, we describe three ways of framing partnership that represent distinct but related analytical approaches: building on concepts; drawing on constructs; and imagining through metaphors. We both affirm the expansive and creative theorising in scholarship of SaP in university teaching and learning and encourage further deliberate use and thoughtful development of interpretive framings that take seriously the disruptive ethos and messy human relational processes of partnership. We argue that these developmental processes move us toward formulating theories of partnership praxis.

Beautiful minds and unruly bodies: embodiment and academic identity in Still Alice and The Theory of Everything

ABSTRACT This article explores the representation of disability and academic identity in two award-winning films: Still Alice and The Theory of Everything. Drawing on scholarship about embodiment and the ‘normal professor body’, I demonstrate how the complex images of disabled academics in these films take up and replicate (to differing extents) dominant discourses of disembodied intellectualism that shape conceptions of the professoriate. As examples of public pedagogy, these representations have significant ramifications for popular understandings of disability and higher education.