It is not about the destination but the journey: A dive into student–staff partnership processes

Abstract

Student–staff partnership advocates the active involvement of students’ voices in the design of education. Although the concept of student–staff partnership is rapidly gaining momentum in health professions education, the current practices are more outcome-focused and pay less attention to the partnership process itself. Students’ involvement in most of the claimed partnerships has been viewed as input information to the educational design process rather than inviting them to the more pronounced role as partners. In this commentary, we elaborate on different levels of students’ involvement in educational design, before highlighting the possible dynamics between students and staff in partnership. We propose five key features of dynamics involved in the process of real student–staff partnerships and a Process-Outcome Model for Student–staff Partnership. We advocate that moving beyond outcomes and diving deeper into the partnership processes is the way forward to establishing true student–staff partnerships.