Exploring the importance of backstage conversations in student-faculty partnerships

In the midst of ongoing global disruption, uncertainty, and loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we embarked together on a student-faculty research partnership that developed as part of a larger multi-institutional research team.Our focus here is on the experience of the authors-a student and a faculty member.Drawing on two significant moments in our partnership, we use the concept of "backstage conversations" to explore how we handled uncertain/complex situations and the multifaceted dimensions of power in our research project.We suggest there is value in extending Erving Goffman's (1959) idea of backstage conversations to explore experiences in student-faculty partnerships and understand how they can help develop partnerships that occur within larger collaborative projects.The concept of backstage conversations comes from Goffman's (1959) dramaturgical framework, using the metaphor of theatre and performance to understand how individuals act and interact in different contexts.Goffman's framework references positions on a stage (frontstage, sidestage, and backstage), with backstage conversations usually characterized as being private: a space where individuals can relax and drop what might be considered "formal" role performance.Our process of reflection included us individually writing for 5 minutes to a prompt-What has this partnership been like for me?-and sharing with one another what we noticed (rather than what we liked/disliked) in each other's writing, allowing us to see what resonated with us as readers.We did this at the end of our partnership experience, which enabled us to identify words, phrases, and ideas that we felt were powerful and piqued our curiosity to know more.We then engaged in follow-up freewriting for 20 minutes and shared what we noticed again.From this process, we identified the topic of this reflection: the importance of backstage conversations in partnership spaces.To preserve each other's perspectives and voices, we approach this reflective essay by writing alternately in the first-person singular ("I") and the firstperson plural ("we").