Can student partners disagree?

Dr Stuart Grey explores how student partners experience disagreement and uncertainty, and why the scope of an invitation to contribute deserves attention. Two qualitative studies lead into practical questions about decisions, responsibilities and whose experience appears in a partnership review.

In this episode:

Following a student suggestion that was declined, including how the decision was explained.
Exploring different reasons students may feel uncertain about partnership.
Keeping valued relationships and concerns about decisions visible in the same account.
Explaining the scope of a listening exercise and how its themes will be considered.

Research and sector sources

Student partnerships can leave dissent unheard, based on Lutendo Nendauni's Student-staff partnerships as counterforces to toxic leadership in higher education: insights from a South African university. Nendauni's complete author-uploaded paper. Published online 27 March 2026. Interviews with ten students and ten academics at one institution, selected for relevant experiences, provide situated accounts rather than a prevalence estimate.
Student partnership can bring uncertainty as well as trust, based on Gerald L. Decelles III, Catherine Bovill and Anders Mattias Lundmark's The Same, But Different: Teacher and student experiences of partnership, published 6 November 2025. Complete Decelles, Bovill and Lundmark paper. Twenty questionnaire respondents included nine interviewees; these are not separate samples totalling 29. The authors identify limited representation of critical experiences in the analysis.
UWE community listening exercise sets out feedback boundaries. The complete UWE announcement and participation information, published 17 August 2026, explains the remit and planned reporting. This is an ongoing exercise, not an evaluation of its outcomes.

The learning-activity example, proposed review questions and suggestions for interpreting comments are Stuart's practical applications, not interventions evaluated by these sources.

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Transcript

Hi, and welcome back to Student Voice Weekly. I'm Stuart Grey, and today I'd like to talk about what happens when students disagree with people they've been invited to work with.

There are two papers in this week's newsletter that approach that question from different directions. The first looks at partnerships in a university where participants had experienced toxic leadership. The second one looks at how staff and students experience partnership, including the uncertainty that can bring. I think they're useful to read together, particularly as teams begin working with new student partners this term.

The first study is by Lutendo Nendauni. It draws on interviews with 10 students and 10 academics at one South African university. Participants were deliberately selected because of their experience of toxic leadership and partnership, so we need to keep that context in mind.

Some students described being included in governance discussions, but having their challenges dismissed. Other accounts described co-design work where students felt their ideas mattered. There were also accounts of people becoming exhausted by being dismissed and stopping speaking up.

So what interests me is the difference between an invitation to contribute and what happens once someone contributes something difficult or challenging.

If we're reviewing a student partnership, for instance, it'd be easy to start with the ideas that were taken forward from that. There's usually something concrete that comes from these things, say, a resource was created or a workshop was redesigned or a different way of working was agreed, for instance.

But one thing we don't normally hear about is the ideas that went nowhere, the things that were shut down.

Now, there may well be perfectly reasonable explanations for this. Perhaps the funding wasn't available, or it would have created a problem elsewhere over the course.

But did the student get that explanation? Could they discuss it? And did they feel able to come back with another suggestion afterwards?

The second paper adds something to this discussion. So Gerald Decelles and colleagues looked at experiences of partnership among students and staff.

This was mainly in Norwegian geoscience settings with some participation from Edinburgh. So they had questionnaire responses from ten students and ten staff. Nine of those people also took part in interviews. This was another small study looking closely at people's accounts.

So staff described reassurances that could come from closer relationships with students.

For some students, partnership though brought uncertainty as it challenged their expectations about the teacher's role. It muddied the waters, so to speak.

So relationships with these staff could also help manage that uncertainty. So very complex issues going on here.

This makes sense to me in that we might invite students to help something because we want them to give more influence, but they may also be trying to work out what we're asking of them to take responsibility for and where staff responsibility begins and ends.

So imagine asking students to help redesign a learning activity, for example. One student might have plenty of ideas but want to know whether changes will affect how their work is assessed.

Another might be happy with the assessment arrangements but unsure whether they can question the purpose of the activity itself.

I'd want to make time to explain which decisions are open, what has already been agreed, and who is responsible for the final decision for this work.

And I'd come back to that frequently as the work develops because an invitation that sounded clear in the beginning can become less clear once people start making choices and the power dynamics come into play.

There's a related example in this week's sector news.

So UWE Bristol has commissioned Advance HE to run a community listening exercise following developments including updates to its trans and non-binary policy.

It offers a written route alongside conversations and makes clear the exercise excludes policy consultation, legal review, and decision-making.

The announcement describes planned thematic reporting but doesn't actually give us evidence of the eventual outcomes.

I'm interested in that explicit statement of scope. A student can then consider what the invitation offers and whether it is the right place for what they want to raise, right? So it gives them that information up front.

For any listening exercise, I'd want to follow that through throughout the whole process.

Who will consider the themes? How will participants hear the response? And if someone raises something beyond the exercise's remit, is it clear where that concern can go?

And this is all thought about, but communicating it up front really helps in these situations.

So the same questions come up when we turn comments into a report for colleagues, for instance.

Suppose students value the working relationship but feel that an important decision was already settled. I'd want both parts of that account to remain visible.

That means checking the comments behind the themes and being willing to ask students whether our interpretation fits what they actually wanted.

Also means recognising that the comments won't be the whole story.

And you want to make sure that right the way through, everyone who wants to be involved is involved.

So we can follow - we and they can follow what they proposed, what actually happened, what they experienced and we have a more grounded conversation about the partnership rather than just asking at the end, asking everyone if it went well or not.

So you'll find the research and the UWE example in this week's newsletter with links in the show notes. Thanks for listening. Please do share this with anyone who enjoys this podcast and works in HE, and I'll talk to you next week.