Welcome
The International Journal for Students as Partners (IJSaP) is published twice a year by McMaster University Library Press and supported by McMaster’s Paul R. MacPherson Institute for Leadership, Innovation and Excellence in Teaching.
IJSaP is a journal about learning and teaching together in higher education. IJSaP explores new perspectives, practices, and policies regarding how students and staff (used here and subsequently to refer to academic staff/faculty, professional staff, and other stakeholders) are working in partnership to enhance learning and teaching in higher education. Shared responsibility for teaching and learning is the underlying premise of students as partners, and IJSaP is produced using a student-staff partnership approach.
IJSaP is designed to appeal to a wide audience of readers and potential authors in the higher education community. It aims to publish high quality research articles, case studies, reflective essays, opinion pieces, reviews, and other pieces from around the world. Contributions written collaboratively by students and staff are particularly encouraged, although single and other co-authored pieces are also acceptable. All submissions go through a rigorous review process involving both staff and students.
About IJSaP
IJSaP is an open access, online, English-language, peer-reviewed journal that is committed to enacting the principles of partnership in the way it operates.
The distinctive features of IJSaP:
- It is an international journal on students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education
- It values multiple forms of analysis, including research articles, case studies, opinion pieces, reflective essays, and reviews
- Authors, reviewers, and readers constitute a broad group within the higher education community, including academics, instructors, educational developers, librarians, learning resource specialists, officers of students’ unions/guilds associations, undergraduate and graduate students, and other stakeholders working with student partners
- Leadership is from an international editorial team of academics and students working in partnership
ABOUT THIS ISSUE
This issue features the third iteration of ‘Voices From the Field’, which focuses on: ‘The art of partnership: Expanding representations and interpretations’. It aims to contribute to decolonizing efforts that move beyond the primacy of the written word in white-supremacy ways of thinking in general and in representing pedagogical partnership work. In addition to the introduction by the editors it features 14 contributions of artistic/visual images/videos that represent, describe, or explain the authors’ experiences of partnership and up to 200 words of context/additional explanation.
Call for contributions to Voices from the Field section of IJSaP
We invite you to contribute to the fourth iteration of the International Journal of Student as Partner’s section called “Voices from the Field.” The goal of this section is to create a venue for a wide range of voices to address important questions around students-as-partners work without going through the intensive time commitment required by the submission, review, and revision processes. We want to hear your voices and put them into dialogue with one another!
We are posting this open call for thoughts on the question below, and we will organize excerpts from the responses we receive into what we hope will be a creative, engaging, accessible format to share with readers. Here is the question we invite you to address: In what ways can students-as-partners work inform assessment?
We recognize that “assessment” means different things in different contexts. Therefore, we ask that, as part of your submission, you specify what definition you are working with.
Submissions should include:
- a clear and concise definition of how you are using “assessment”
- 75 to 150 words that capture your insights on students-as-partners work in assessment (submissions exceeding 150 words will be returned to the author with a request to bring the contribution in line with the stated word limit);
- informal but substantive exploration—these can be practical and/or provocative, experience based or newly imagined, a plan or a challenge;
- clearly articulated from your own position and perspective (so very briefly tell readers who you are—context, identities/background, position); and
- explicit focus on partnership/students as partners in assessment
- Optional: images/visual representations, as included in the most recent iteration of Voices From the Field, “The Art of Partnership: Expanding Representations and Interpretations”
Please submit by Monday 19 December 2022 12.00 EST at the latest using this link here (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6YSLDBM).
Early responses would be appreciated.