Sandra Abegglen (@sandra-abegglen.bsky.social)

"Students need structured opportunities to collaborate with peers, lecturers, and external partners as part of their core program, with dedicated time and space to engage in partnership work." [Abegglen et al., 2025, page 223] 🔗 doi.org/10.15173/ijs...

loading . . .

Embracing the “third space” in higher education: A case for embedded students-as-partners teaching and learning | International Journal for Students as Partners This paper presents a case for integrating students as partners (SaP) within the curriculum of higher education (HE), particularly through the lens of “third space” learning. Drawing on our experiences as a collaborative of educators in Canada and the United Kingdom, we explore the liberatory potential of play, partnership, and co-creation in HE. Through the Becoming an Educationist (Becoming) module, we demonstrate how SaP can empower students—especially non-traditional students in UK post-1992 universities, that is, UK institutions with a strong focus on widening participation, applied learning, and “social mobility” or transformative learning—to find their voice in academia. We argue for embedding SaP within the curriculum to foster a sustainable ecology of collaborative practice for social justice, challenging traditional divisive structures in education. https://doi.org/10.15173/ijsap.v9i2.5970