Staff-student partnership activity continues to increase across the higher education sector, expanding to encompass a broad range of initiatives. Numerous frameworks and typologies have been proposed to help organise the literature and facilitate comparisons among different types of partnerships. The research reported here draws on a case study of a quality-enhancement staff-student partnership to identify the stages of the partnership co-creation process. It argues that the establishment of partnership values is intertwined with the stages of the co-creation process and is critical to the partnership’s success. This research contributes to practice and the literature by offering a practical approach to managing a staff-student partnership, adding to work on quality enhancement partnerships, and extending prior work evaluating partnership activity from the perspectives of multiple stakeholders.

This case study outlines a staff-student partnership to co-create generic assessment criteria to use in a UK business school. It highlights the potential for staff-student partnerships to create a temporary subfield, in which the established power differentials of academia are dissolved and partnership values can be established. We draw on a series of 10 semi-structured interviews with partnership participants. The values that underpin partnerships are linked to three major phases of the partnership process: establishing the partnership, partnership operation and atmosphere, and the partnership outcomes. The findings indicate that the values of authenticity, reciprocity, and inclusion are critical antecedents to establishing a successful partnership and that careful attention should be paid to establishing the partnership. The case extends our understanding of the partnership process by emphasising these antecedents. The study is multi-authored, which reflects an extension to the partnership process described in the case study.