Collaborative Assessments and Conversations: Implementing a Pedagogical Partnership

Student engagement and collaboration are important for student success. Pedagogical partnerships, or the pairing of a professor and an undergraduate student who engage in ongoing dynamic pedagogical reflection, increase student engagement and expand collaboration in the classroom. Drawing on field notes, feedback session data, and professor and student partner reflections, we demonstrate how pedagogical partnerships effectively address course problems, attenuate the generational gap between professor and students, and help the professor “settle into” the semester. Assessments reveal that the professor’s course policies and student expectations are sometimes contradictory, which decreases student engagement. Students viewed the pedagogical partnership as an attempt to care for them; therefore, their requests for course changes were minimal and easily implemented. Professors might benefit from having a student partner as they mitigate vulnerability by providing affirmations and gentle criticism continuously throughout the semester. Pedagogical partnerships embody what bell hooks considered education as a practice of freedom.