Transgressing the boundaries of ‘students as partners’ and ‘feedback’ discourse communities to advance democratic education

Abstract

Participatory approaches are receiving renewed attention in the ‘students as partners’ (SaP) and ‘feedback’ discourse communities, respectively. SaP scholars tend to focus on pedagogy (pedagogical partnerships) and curriculum (co-creation). Assessment and feedback, as connective and relational practices that bridge these two domains, receive less empirical and conceptual attention as partnership praxis. Both share commitments to participatory forms of democratic education and critical pedagogy. This conceptual article transgresses artificial boundaries often constructed between discourse communities through bringing into conversation established scholars from both. In doing so, we illuminate two points of intersection: dialogue and trust. First, speaking back to the SaP community, we urge greater recognition of feedback practices as partnership praxis entangled with both pedagogical and curricular praxis. Second, speaking back to the feedback community, we advocate for a foregrounding and richer theorisations of learner-teacher power dynamics in feedback praxis. We conclude by considering the implications for both discourse communities.