Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 10 | Page 8

8 | JADE
EDITORIAL | 9
SCOTT BORDER
bring about change. Therefore, I have become a strong advocate
for engagement in learning and teaching through the partnership
approach. At its roots, this is about co-creation with students. There
is a somewhat subtle difference between student engagement
and partnering. Most institutions create opportunities to listen and
respond to student feedback. This is a useful process which serves
to recommend solutions and changes to the way in which faculties
coordinate and deliver teaching in the curriculum. However, the
partnership approach supports the student as an active collaborator
and co-producer with the potential for educational transformation
(Healey et al, 2014).
My personal experience concentrates on students as partners in
learning and teaching, although I fully recognise that students
can act as partners in many other important ways. Whatever the
dynamics of the partnership model, to achieve all their benefits
require an element of risk taking on behalf of the faculty which many
may be inherently averse to. In many cases, the concept of shared
responsibility will be new territory and it will be tempting to adopt
an overly conservative approach. However, there can be no half
measures if there is to be a true spirit of engagement and shared
purpose within the team (Border, 2017).
It is probably fair to say that I have never cared too much for the
hierarchy embed within Universities. I have always worked informally
with students and forged effortless relationships with those who
share my passion for neuroscience and teaching, no matter what
their stage of training. It is through this ethos of working which
has enabled my sustainable student partnership projects to have a
transformative impact on the discipline. By establishing a culture of
trust and mutual respect through sustainable ventures, the student
experience has been enriched beyond a level that the faculty could
have achieved independently.
My own work embracing students as partners stems from the desire
to alleviate the stress and anxiety that comes with studying clinical
neuroscience in medical education. This discipline is feared by
students and often referred to along the corridors of Southampton
General Hospital as being the most difficult subject matter in the
preclinical years. For a few years prior to my leadership on the module
student performance in the assessments was lower than average,
coupled with low levels of student satisfaction for the learning
experience more generally, evidenced from the end of module
evaluations. Such feelings by students were confounded further
by a run of recent revalidated curriculum changes that witnessed a
reduction in time given to the basic sciences—none were hit harder
than head, neck and neuroscience (Heylings, 2002).
EDITORIAL: INCLUSIVE TEACHING
Now, there are many interventions that could have been adopted to
tackle some of the issues within the module, but given my enjoyment
for working closely with students I wanted to develop those
relationships to build a culture of transparency and inclusivity within
teaching on the module. To do this I deployed near-peer teaching
(NPT) within the curriculum on a fairly large scale. Trained senior
medical students who had, only a few years ago, experienced the
very same module, were now delivering teaching in the laboratory,
lecture theatres and in small group settings, to students who were
on average two years their junior.
Students have a very different way of teaching to that of the faculty—
they tend to use less jargon, speak less formally and retrace their
own learning experiences when explaining concepts to others. This
process is termed “cognitive congruence” and for me is the absolute
gold dust of the NPT rationale—it is referring to the intellectual
proximity shared between the student teachers and learners and
becomes particularly useful when teaching challenging topics
(Lockspeiser, 2008). This is mainly due to these topics requiring
alternative explanations to be fully understood—so neuroscience
was in fact, the perfect platform for this to flourish (Hall et al,
2018). The second unique aspect is the social congruence which
students share—essentially because the rules of professionalism
shift slightly when it comes to interacting with your peers, it means
that often the student learners feel more comfortable confessing
to not understanding something to an NPT and generally consider
them more approachable than staff (Hall et al, 2013). I learned that
the NPT’s were very soon being viewed as role models by junior
students, and relied on them not only for academic knowledge but
also for encouragement, advice and even pastoral support in coping
with a very intense module (Stephens et al, 2016). Furthermore, the
NPT’s were developing a range of transferrable skills important for
their careers, such as professionalism, leadership, team working and
communication to name but a few (Galgut et al, 2017).
It took a little negotiation with the faculty for them to get on board
with my vision for the module, so I knew that for sustainability
purposes pedagogic research was required—the evidence would be
important to bolster my arguments to support its continuation. Once
again, I was wholly inclusive and put students at the forefront of many
projects, such as investigations exploring the optimal educational
distance between student teachers and learners (Hall et al, 2014a),
investigating the dynamics of the teaching setting (Taylor et al,
2015), comparing NPT as frontline and revision resource, its bearing
on stress and anxiety and impact on both the student experience
and knowledge gain (Parton et al, 2016a; Parton et al, 2016b).