Creating Spaces: Embracing Risk and Partnership in Higher Education

My latest publication was co-written with Juliet Hancock, with whom I work in the Professional Learning team at Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh. In this essay, we reflect on risk in partnerships in learning in higher education, including initial teacher education and teachers’ continued lifelong professional learning.

In the essay Creating Spaces: Embracing Risk and Partnership in Higher Education, we explore risk and expand on challenges within the themes of:

• the ethos and values of partnership; 
• sustaining our commitments;
• vulnerabilities in trying new things; 
• negotiation of learning; and 
• rapport and relationships

We are both passionate about learner voice and exploring ways of creating opportunities for deep and meaningful partnerships. This includes considering ways of overcoming potential risks that working in partnership with learners may surface for all concerned in learning and teaching, including challenges arising from trying new things by teaching outside the box. The essay also considers how best to model and enact the ethos and values of partnership work that others might wish to take forward and further develop in their own practice.

We hope you enjoy reading the full essay as well as others in Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education.