Student partners as methodological critics

The University College Cork (UCC) Centre for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) Pedagogical Partners Project, a student-staff partnership project (SSPP), aimed to increase inclusivity in UCC’s pedagogical practices. Student and teacher partners formed teams, with students observing and providing feedback on teaching. Student partners (SPs) used mid-semester feedback (MSF) to gather student perspectives, promoting inclusion by enabling in-semester improvements. The MSFs achieved impressive engagement from students in the class, generated rich data, and led to productive responses from teacher partners (TPs). However, minority voices were not as successfully platformed as hoped. Using collaborative autoethnography, SPs analysed the efficacy of the MSF tool. Findings indicate student-led facilitation, third-party management, and mid-semester timing drove high engagement. Opportunities to better platform inclusivity-relevant feedback include supporting imagination, more explicit questioning, reduced emphasis on consensus in reporting, and consideration of alternative data analysis approaches.