What Is and What Can Be: How a Liminal Position Can Change Learning and Teaching in Higher Education

Abstract

In this article we analyze what happens when undergraduate students are positioned as pedagogical consultants in a faculty development program. Drawing on their spoken and written perspectives, and using the classical anthropological concept of “liminality,” we illustrate how these student consultants revise their relationships with their teachers and their responsibilities within their learning. These revisions have the potential to transform deep‐seated societal understandings of education based on traditional hierarchies and teacher–student distinctions. [liminality, position, student consultant, learning, change]

Borderland spaces for learning partnership: opportunities, benefits and challenges

“…Crossing into borderland spaces and attempting to challenge and disrupt the power relationships inherent in the teacher-student contradiction (Freire, 1970); the hierarchical positioning in which faculty adopt the role of experts and students receive knowledge passively, requires both students and faculty to become accustomed to positions of liminality (Cook-Sather & Alter, 2011). To quote Turner (1974: 232), when entering a liminal space participants become 'ambiguous, neither here nor there, betwixt and between all fixed points of classification'.…”

“…This novel learning space initially brought a sense of liminality to the students (Cook-Sather & Alter, 2011). Asking them to use personal technology for academic purposes was met with some reservation:…”

Guidelines for Authorship Credit, Order, and Co-Inquirer Learning in Collaborative Faculty-Student SoTL Projects

“…Teaching & Learning Inquiry: The ISSOTL Journal's own review guidelines). This partnership fundamentally challenges traditional power dynamics (Bovill et al, 2011, Cook-Sather & Alter, 2011Manor et al, 2010) and this challenge has profound implications for authorship credit. If SoTL community leaders, like ISSOTL or leading interdisciplinary SoTL journals and conferences, were to adopt the authorship guidelines proposed here, that would send a strong message that shared authorship with students is not only appropriate but valued in SoTL scholarship.…”

We are the Process: Reflections on the Underestimation of Power in Students as Partners in Practice

“…Generally, there is an intention to challenge traditional authoritative structures in post-secondary institutions (Cook-Sather & Alter, 2011;Mihans et al, 2008), even if the impetus for these practices is related to government regulation, as is the case in the UK (Seale et al, 2015). There is often a sensitivity to power dynamics in relationships between the student and instructor or institution (Cook-Sather, 2009;Cohen, Cook-Sather, & Lesnick, 2013;Healey et al, 2014).…”