Higher Education Research & Development

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Exploring the role of conflict in co-creation of

curriculum through engaging students as partners
in the classroom

Nattalia Godbold, Tsai-Yu (Amy) Hung & Kelly E. Matthews

To cite this article: Nattalia Godbold, Tsai-Yu (Amy) Hung & Kelly E. Matthews (2021): Exploring
the role of conflict in co-creation of curriculum through engaging students as partners in the
classroom, Higher Education Research & Development, DOI: 10.1080/07294360.2021.1887095

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2021.1887095

Published online: 26 Feb 2021.

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HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2021.1887095

Exploring the role of conflict in co-creation of curriculum

through engaging students as partners in the classroom
Nattalia Godbold , Tsai-Yu (Amy) Hung and Kelly E. Matthews
Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Engaging students as pedagogical partners aspires to reposition Received 18 July 2020
students with more agency within universities as egalitarian Accepted 19 January 2021
learning communities. The growing literature reports numerous
KEYWORDS
beneficial outcomes of such positioning, yet many partnership Students as partners;
opportunities are limited to small numbers of selected students pedagogical partnership;
in extra-curricular, quality-assurance efforts. Understanding how decision-making; conflict; co-
partnership can reach into the classroom space affords creation; assessment
opportunities to expand both practices to more students and
theorisations of partnership beyond the extra-curricular realm.
Our study investigates how final-year undergraduate students
experienced the shift toward partnership in the classroom.
Thematic analysis of focus group conversations surfaced four
interrelated themes that shared many similarities with existing
literature, yet diverged in regards to the central place of conflict
students navigated as power dynamics shifted. Conflict
manifested as both internal (within individual students) and
interpersonal (among students and between students and the
teacher). We argue for deeper attention to conflict, including its
generative potential, in partnership practices.

Introduction
Over the past decade, there has been an increasing emphasis on students being more
meaningfully involved in learning and teaching as partners with teaching staff (Cook-
Sather et al., 2014). The term ‘students as partners’ has, in some contexts, become a
catch-all phrase for practices, programs, pedagogies, and philosophies that attend to
the quality of relationships that students form with other students, teaching staff,
researchers, administrators, and university staff. The excitement for engaging students
as partners is evident through journals (e.g., International Journal for Students as Part-
ners; Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education), events (e.g., the annual Inter-
national Students as Partners Institute; the annual Australian Students as Partners
Roundtable), and inclusion in institutional strategic plans (Matthews, Cook-Sather,
et al., 2018). These venues showcase the many benefits of partnership and, increasingly,
the challenges of this work, such as when pedagogical disagreements arise (Abbot &
Cook-Sather, 2020), when partners bring different assumptions about the work

CONTACT Kelly E. Matthews k.matthews1@uq.edu.au

© 2021 HERDSA
2 N. GODBOLD ET AL.

(Healey et al., 2019), and when partners experience negative outcomes (Cook-Sather,
Bahti, et al., 2019).
Bovill and Woolmer (2018) have called for further research explicitly on partnership
through co-creation in the curriculum that involves all enrolled students in a class, and
research specifically illuminating students’ experiences of these forms of partnership.
Therefore, we designed a qualitative research study to capture students’ experiences
and conceptualisations of partnership through co-creation in a final-year undergraduate
class at a research-intensive Australian university. Our intention was to understand and
support genuine partnership practices that worked toward a culture of universities as
egalitarian learning communities (Matthews, Cook-Sather, et al., 2018).
We begin by grounding our work in literature on engaging students as partners in
learning and teaching, framing ‘conflict’ to foreground our discussion, and outlining
what we call the ‘partnership classroom’ to name the partnership we examine in this
study. Then we describe our research design and present our findings. The majority of
our discussion is devoted to interpreting our findings in relation to two forms of
conflict – internal and interpersonal.

Conceptions of partnership and co-creation in the curriculum

An array of models, frameworks, principles, propositions, and typologies (Bovill, 2017;
Bovill & Woolmer, 2018; Cook-Sather et al., 2014; Dunne & Zandstra, 2011; Healey
et al., 2014; Matthews, 2017) has emerged to name, classify, define, and make sense of
the many practices and people associated with the umbrella (and contested) term ‘stu-
dents as partners’ (Cook-Sather et al., 2018). The well-cited Healey et al. (2014) model
proposes that students can be partners or co-creators in many ways, both in and out
of the classroom, and with many players (other students, librarians, administrators, lec-
turers, researchers, and general university staff). A systematic literature review conducted
by Mercer-Mapstone, Dvorakova, Matthews, et al. (2017) found that the majority of 65
empirical studies focused on students partnering outside of the assessed curriculum in
selective, extra-curricular projects focused on educational quality assurance activities.
Naming students as partners explicitly in classroom curriculum co-creation practices
was far less prevalent, with only 14 of the 65 classified as partnership in classroom-
based learning, teaching, and assessment (Mercer-Mapstone, Dvorakova, Matthews,
et al., 2017).
The most widely cited definition for partnership comes from Cook-Sather et al. (2014,
pp. 6–7): ‘a collaborative, reciprocal process through which all participants have the
opportunity to contribute equally, although not necessarily in the same ways, to curricu-
lar or pedagogical conceptualization, decision-making, implementation, investigation, or
analysis’. The crux of the definition is the assertion that students should be a part of
learning and teaching activities typically viewed as the work of faculty. The rationales
the authors offered are both pedagogical and political: that students have the expertise
to contribute to enhancing learning and teaching based on the experience of being a
student that lecturers do not possess, and that the development of teaching and learning
approaches should be more democratic processes.
Bovill and Woolmer (2018) discuss co-creation in the curriculum that engages enrolled
students in co-designing aspects of a course as it unfolds, or what Bovill (2019) more
 HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT 3

recently referred to as ‘whole-of-class co-creation of learning and teaching’. Examples of

such co-creation include Bell et al.’s (2013) study of all students in a large (500+) business
course engaging in a process of deliberative democracy, Bergmark and Westman’s (2016)
study of students co-creating a syllabus, and Deeley and Bovill’s (2017) study of co-creating
assessment approaches. Involving all enrolled students in partnership processes to co-
create the course as it unfolds enables deeper understanding of the purpose, aims, and
intentions of a course, and is more equitable than selective, extra-curricular project-
based partnership models (Bovill, 2019). Yet, the limited research also shows these pro-
cesses can be difficult for students and teachers as they rewrite the traditional classroom
roles and expectations that many are accustomed to (Bergmark & Westman, 2016).
Bovill (2019, p. 4) recently argued that the ‘lack of attention to pedagogically
embedded forms of co-creation between a teacher and a whole class of students is a dis-
tinct weakness in the current literature’. Our study responds to this call for action. Fore-
shadowing our results, we contribute explicitly on the role of conflict in co-creation in the
classroom. Often implied in relation to negotiation, dialogue, power dynamics, and com-
munication in partnership, conflict is rarely explicitly discussed or theorised in the litera-
ture. We begin by setting the scene of our study context.

The ‘partnership classroom’ as a form of co-creation in the curriculum

Bovill (2019) argued that we need to understand what practices of co-creation in the cur-
riculum – what we call the partnership classroom – can look like. To that end, we
describe our study context in detail to better aid interpretation of our findings and
give an example of what partnership as co-creation in the classroom can be.
We draw on the work of Cook-Sather, Bahti, et al. (2019), who frame curriculum as
more than ‘content delivery’ but rather as the lived enactment of knowledge co-construc-
tion between learners and teachers. Students generated knowledge in our partnership
classroom through collaborative research projects where they worked together to
decide on the research group, topic, questions, methods, data collection, analysis, and
interpretation. Students conducting research in itself is a form of partnership, ‘subject-
based research and inquiry’ (Healey et al., 2014) where students become knowledge
co-creators through an inquiry-based pedagogical approach (Aditomo et al., 2013).
Inspired by the practices of Monsen et al. (2017) in Australia, and Huxham et al.
(2015) in Scotland, the lecturer in our study invited students to consider the deadlines
and weightings of assessment items. Students discussed these in small groups and as a
whole class before voting. This was not straightforward, with close to half the students
on either side of a decision about 10% of their grade and a deadline for the final research
task. This process involved clarifying decision-making roles of the lecturer and students
(Heron, 1992) as decision making was more than the lecturer adopting an uncritical view
of students’ preferences (Bovill et al., 2009). The lecturer offered pedagogical and ethical
commentary to inform thinking based on the principles of inclusion and social justice.
In the spirit of partnership where the expertise of students and teachers is valued as
different yet equally important (Cook-Sather et al., 2014), navigating conflict arising
from shared decision making in the classroom involves the inclusion of differing perspec-
tives and standpoints. In the space opened for differing views, a student made a sugges-
tion that questioned the assumption (as per the lecturer’s alternatives outlining the whole
4 N. GODBOLD ET AL.

class assessment weighting) that every student had to have the same weighting for assess-
ment items. Following discussion, the class decided students individually could choose
how they wanted 10% of their grade to be weighted (toward differing assessment
tasks), which worked against the standard practice of all students having the same
weighting regime in a course. The students felt this was equitable and still enabled all stu-
dents to demonstrate the course learning outcomes.

Method
We designed an exploratory qualitative study guided by the following broad question:
How do students perceive and receive co-creation in the classroom? Our intention was
to search for meaning in the experiences of undergraduate students who shared their
stories, evolving beliefs, and individual truths. Our research was conducted in accordance
with ethical standards following Institutional Human Research Ethics Approval and was
undertaken at a research-intensive Australian university.
At the end of the teaching semester, 61 students enrolled in a final-year course in a
primary education degree program were invited to share their experiences of co-creation
in a partnership classroom through focus groups conducted by a PhD student (author
Godbold) who was not involved in the course but did observe the first class. Seven stu-
dents (one male and six female students all between the ages of 20 and 26) participated in
two focus-group conversations. The semi-structured, one-hour focus groups opened up
space for students to reflect and comment on the partnership classroom, including how
they understood the idea of co-creation through partnership, how it impacted assumed
learner-teacher roles, and how their stories from the class related to co-creation activities.
The focus groups were audio-recorded and later transcribed, with students invited to
comment on or revise the transcripts (none did). As students in the final year of an edu-
cation degree program, they brought uniquely informed perspectives to bear on the topic
as soon-to-be teachers themselves who could potentially be facilitating partnership with
students in their own careers. As evident in the next section, the students discussed how
they understood co-creation through partnership both in terms of how they experienced
it and by imagining how they would ‘do it’, which illuminated their understandings and
the role of conflict as central to how they made sense of classroom partnership practices.
We drew on Braun and Clarke’s (2006) approach to thematic analysis. We first famil-
iarised ourselves with the transcribed conversations, discussed the themes that kept
emerging in our individual analysis and through ongoing discussions, then generated
an initial sketch of codes and their definitions. From these initial codes, we developed
a series of latent themes that we felt represented the transcribed conversations, which
were then collated into potential themes. After observing the relationships between the
themes, a thematic map was created. These themes were again reviewed and revised,
then applied to the transcripts through a series of iterations before finalising our
themes over a period of six weeks.

Four distinct yet interdependent themes

Our analysis illuminated four themes: developing different relationships; being seen
as more than just a student; agency through decision making; and co-creation in the
 HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT 5

curriculum as complicated and emotional choices. In making sense of these themes,

it is important to note that students in the focus groups were talking about co-cre-
ation from a novice perspective. By that, we mean the students revealed that these
forms of pedagogical praxis were new to them. Although they were final-year stu-
dents and had been taught about ‘student voice’, they had not experienced it in
practice. The lack of familiarity we heard is a finding shared by Bergmark and
Westman (2016) when they examined curriculum co-creation in an undergraduate
classroom in a Swedish university. Both the university context of this study in Aus-
tralia and that of Bergman and Westman have strong institutional commitments to
engaging with students as partners. This offers further evidence that the idea of
partnership with students is being enacted mostly outside of the classroom curri-
culum (Mercer-Mapstone, Dvorakova, Matthews, et al., 2017) and affirms Bovill
and Woolmer’s (2018) call for research into curriculum co-creation in classrooms.

Developing different relationships

Partnership is fundamentally about relationships that develop by disrupting student–
teacher identities and assumed power dynamics (Cook-Sather et al., 2014; Matthews,
Cook-Sather, et al., 2019). This disruption of expected norms emerged in the focus
groups as evident in this dialogue between some students:

Deb: She (the lecturer) didn’t go into great depth with it (co-creation) but I think
it was important for her to say that at the beginning and express: I’m giving
you ownership and I think that you’re responsible enough for that. It’s nice
to be acknowledged for that. I think after so many years of-
Susan: Being treated like a child.
Deb: Being treat like a child.
Carole: So much scaffolding.
Susan: I am the lecturer, I know everything.
Carole: I think also it is showing an understanding that the lecturer can’t actually know
everything about all of our research projects … she provided us examples and
facilitated us taking the lead because she understood we’re coming in with the
information, which is good.
Deb: Empowering.

By being recognised as having knowledge and authority over their learning and assess-
ment processes, the learner-teacher relationship felt different:
I personally think, this course is probably one of the better relationships we’ve (our cohort)
had, not on a personal level, like I haven’t really had any personal, one-on-one conversa-
tions with her (the lecturer), but just in terms of like, umm, having a positive feeling
towards the course, and feeling like if I wasn’t happy with something, I could bring that
up. (Luke)

As the power dynamics and identities of students and staff were re-imagined, the
process of co-creation gave way to a ‘better relationship’ that shifted how they saw them-
selves as ‘students’.
6 N. GODBOLD ET AL.

Being seen as more than just a student

For our participants, being involved in co-creation revealed and challenged their under-
lying understandings and historical assumptions, based on their past experiences, about
the prescribed roles of teachers and students with limited agency in the classroom.
It’s a transition away from that hierarchy of I’m the lecturer, you’re the student, like, I think it’s
acknowledging that it’s a very valuable relationship and I think that we did feel like we had
more ownership over our own learning and grade as well, which I think that’s really impor-
tant … I think, just identifying within this course, the feeling that it gave me, actually being
able to have a voice within my own education was, I think that was really motivating. (Deb)

The students in the focus groups recognised that teachers and students both had
different expertise that worked together to contribute to classroom knowledge, aligning
with notions of students-becoming teachers and teachers-becoming learners (Cook-
Sather et al., 2014). Understanding what it means to be a student in new ways with
agency and voice is a common thread in the partnership literature (Cook-Sather et al.,
2014; Healey et al., 2014; Lubicz-Nawrocka, 2019) that aligns with Bergmark and West-
man’s (2016) study of partnership in the classroom where students reported being motiv-
ated through co-creation processes.

Gaining agency through decision making

Through the experience of partnership in the classroom, many students felt that they had
gained agency by being given the opportunity to make decisions. Although the experi-
ence was new and at times felt difficult, students shared that being involved in decision
making morphed the power dynamic within the classroom and signalled that they were
competent in being involved in their own learning.
… one of the options we could choose to do an additional translation essay, or we could have
our mark as our, like, group mark, I think that was good because I could have picked some-
thing different to the rest of the group, and it was still fine. So that gave me, yeah like, a
feeling my needs are being met, based on what I know about myself and my situation.
But it’s not [overlapping conversation from group] yeah, and we could all choose what
suited us best. (Lucy)

… just giving more power to the students is a high motivating factor and I know it’s not
even that significant, but that nod towards, okay well you have this spare 10% to choose
with, if you need to, it’s just I think, more so the act of, identifying that we are adults and
we are able to make our own informed decisions is pretty powerful in the context of a
course. (Deb)

Students identified that they were more motivated. Yet the real power, to their minds,
was in being acknowledged as autonomous individuals – trusted adults – capable of
making their own decisions to suit them. Thus, what seemed to matter to them was the
process of decision making through which they gained agency in the classroom.

Co-creation in the curriculum as complicated and emotional choices

Emotions went hand-in-hand with discussions in the focus groups as students reflected
on their experiences in the course. For example, in the below exchange, some of the
 HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT 7

students are recounting and reflecting on the negotiation process on the first day of class.
The assessment tasks were being discussed and preferences proposed before students
voted for options by walking to certain areas of the room.

Carole: I think it’s a lot less stressful as well (at the start of a course). Then, a lecturer
comes in and presents all these options and it’s pretty obvious what the majority
is … There is one that will obviously suit more students than the other. The fact
that the cohort actively choose, I feel that that is like less stressful, because in my
head I actually understand the logical reasoning why the percentages are as they
are, and I understand what’s coming next and how its working and the pro-
gression and it just makes a lot of sense and that reduces a lot of stress …
Susan: Yea.
Carole: I think even at the start, when we did that stand on the other side of the room, we
were standing opposite each other and were like, dude (laughter) but, we made it
work still.
Susan: Because I wanted to do it on the Friday because I wanted the weekend (free).
Carole: And we understood those differences in opinion and we could physically see the
differences in opinion … (to) come in together in a group and say oh I recognise
you have a different life to me, let’s make this work, is huge …
Susan: No, partly stress (laughter) nah it was pretty good, oh, I did have, I think the first
time, it was a bit, I think when they put the choices up … just tell me!
Deb: I think it’s just you’re so used to people telling you …
Carole: Yeah, I got really frustrated at first …
Susan: The first lesson, I was like just tell me what to do! Then afterwards, it was kind of
just like oh, this is better.

The students are discussing how they navigated an uncomfortable situation where their
choices impacted on others and they had to sort through that. Yet, being a part of
decision making afforded greater insight into the expectations of the course. Nonetheless,
the process evoked feelings of frustration and discomfort with co-creation in the curri-
culum that were echoed by others in the focus groups. Students described the co-creation
process as ‘uncomfortable’ and at times ‘feisty’, signalling that it was an emotionally
involved journey. The discomfort and emotional reaction that comes from the unfamiliar
resonates with classroom-based partnership research from Bergmark and Westman
(2016), and Monsen et al. (2017). The emotional labour and journey that partnership
provokes in extra-curricular practices has also been documented by scholars in the
USA (Cook-Sather, Bahti, et al., 2019; Felten, 2017) and the Netherlands (Hermsen
et al., 2017).
We gleaned further insight into how students made sense of co-creation when the stu-
dents discussed and debated how they might facilitate such processes in their future prac-
tices as teachers. They debated the ease and complexity of small opportunities for
decision making in the classroom.

Lucy: I would be more inclined to incorporate some of these strategies, like in, you know,
having the students have more of a say in what they are learning or the topics they
are doing a presentation on or, yeah, what type of assessment if there was some
leeway with that, if they preferred-
Lily: In saying that though, you have to be really careful with the way you word it or the
way you put it out, because you’re always going to have those students that don’t
agree- [overlapping inaudible discussion from other members of the group] – so
it just has to be thought out.
8 N. GODBOLD ET AL.

Luke: I think one thing I realise though with this, is it’s really, I don’t know, now I feel like
it is quite easy to provide options, just in terms of, it’s one or the other, it doesn’t
have to be a majority vote. You could even implement that in the early years where
you say we’re going to do a presentation and these are your two options that you
can do it on. Or you could choose your theme, or in general learning, you can
have two learning spaces, you can choose to learn at your desk or you can learn
on the carpet. Just little things that, maybe before I might not have considered,
now I can see it wouldn’t really take any extra effort … like it’s very possible to
implement, kind of just giving them a little bit more autonomy in the classroom.

This exchange signals that co-creation in the curriculum is not straightforward, yet
the process mattered because it related to student autonomy and fostering learner
agency that they now appreciated from being in a partnership classroom themselves.
The emotions that students expressed about engaging in the partnership process
were often related to the newness of it and concerns about the conflict it might
cause.
The focus on ‘little’ (a little bit more autonomy; little things) seemed to build confi-
dence in imagining themselves actually facilitating co-creation processes. Framing co-
creation as ‘little’ choices that do not have to require a ‘majority vote’, there is a sense
of wanting to avoid conflict in the classroom. While there was an inclination toward part-
nership, the process of opening up conflict in the classroom complicated students’ think-
ing and understandings of co-creation in the curriculum.

Discussion
Our exploratory study contributes insight into what it means to name the quality of the
learner-teacher relationship in the classroom as a partnership that upended traditional
hierarchical norms about who gets to shape the curriculum. The findings offer further
empirical evidence that meaningful learning relationships can be realised through part-
nership ethos being translated to university classrooms through co-creation in the cur-
riculum (Bovill, 2019, 2020). Partnership through co-creation in our study evoked a
range of emotions and engendered a new sense of agency that students identified as
being motivating. They conceived of co-creation through partnership as developing
different relationships and being seen as more than just a student, yet those were com-
plicated as learner-teacher power dynamics shifted and gave rise to forms of conflict
that they were not accustomed to navigating.
Ultimately this conflict was surmountable for our study participants. Our study
affirms that engaging students in co-creation in the classroom is risky praxis, as
Woolmer (2018) has argued. Because much scholarship to date has focused on decision
making and dialogue without much attention to the role of conflict explicitly, acknowl-
edging and examining the role of conflict in partnership practices advances scholarship
and practice. Such acknowledgement is important as scholars call for research that
moves beyond the ‘celebratory’ (Marquis et al., 2017) to reflect the messy and relational
practices of learner-teacher partnerships where power and identity are always at play
(Matthews, Cook-Sather, et al., 2019). For these reasons, we focus our discussion on
conflict.
 HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT 9

Naming and framing conflict in the partnership

In the traditional classroom, teachers make curricular, pedagogical, and assessment
decisions for students. Conflict in this process is eclipsed by the established roles for
teacher and students, as teachers have authority to set the rules and students have a
choice in how they follow them. In processes of co-creation in the curriculum, as
Bovill and Bulley (2011) have noted, teachers change the rules and invite students to exer-
cise agency that affects them and others in the class. This brings conflict. In their study of
classroom-based partnership, Bergmark and Westman (2016, p. 34) discussed how
‘conflicting expectation’ arises from ‘feelings related to the modified understanding of
teacher and student roles when working with co-created curriculum’. Our study found
these changing expectations were uncomfortable, yet ultimately promoted a strong
sense of being heard and hearing others, as students took responsibility for their own
learning while also caring about others’ learning.
Conflict was not a single interaction or moment, but rather an ongoing part of the
learning process to be navigated and involved both internal and interpersonal conflict.
The changing roles in curriculum co-creation processes demanded that students
wrestle with their own assumptions and beliefs being called into question. We call this
internal conflict. They also had to work through differing perspectives and preferences
of other students and the teacher, through collective decision making typical of partici-
patory processes. We call this interpersonal conflict.

Internal or inner conflict of changing the rules and the power dynamics
The work of partnership ‘challenges traditional assumptions about the identities of, and
relationships between, learners and teachers’ (Matthews, 2017, p. 1) where power can be
shared and reshaped through dialogue but never erased or eliminated. There is an under-
current of internal conflict in partnership premised on asking both students and lecturers
to rethink entrenched and taken-for-granted assumptions. It necessitates self-reflection,
which is central to a genuine partnership (Matthews, 2017), and acting in different ways
that go against conventional and accepted behaviours in university classrooms (Mat-
thews, 2020).
In our study, partnership through co-creation in a partnership classroom was prac-
ticed as ‘a process of balanced give-and-take not of commodities but rather of contri-
butions: perspectives, insights, forms of participation’ (Cook-Sather & Felten, 2017,
p. 181). But balancing perspectives is tricky, particularly in the vertical power structure
of classrooms. Many of the students ultimately came to embrace the underlying premise
that students should have autonomy and agency in classrooms. They were willing to go
against the grain after initial hesitation, and in doing so, work through individual pro-
cesses of internal conflict. Research from Bergmark and Westman (2016, pp. 34–45),
in their study on negotiating curriculum, reported an instructor’s experience with stu-
dents struggling with the shifting roles:
The lead instructor described her experiences when the students were creating course tasks:
Some asked questions the whole time: ‘you must explain this, what do you mean?’ They were
eager to produce the right answer, what they thought I wanted them to plan even though I
10 N. GODBOLD ET AL.

told them that I wanted them to come up with their own thoughts and solutions out of their
own experiences and needs.

Acknowledging the conflict that arises for students in this changing dynamic matters
because, unlike extra-curricular partnership practices, classroom-based partnership is
high stakes because students get graded, which determines how they progress. Thus,
the students in our focus groups came to value the partnership experience and associated
it with higher motivation. However, partnership can feel like an imposition to some stu-
dents who do not want to upend traditional roles or share power in a classroom (Bovill,
2013).

Creating new and uncomfortable interpersonal conflicts in classrooms

Some of the students in our study expressed concern about how others would not like
shared decision making in the classroom. For Lily, dealing with students who don’t
agree – interpersonal conflict – is not something she wanted to do. Marquis et al.
(2017, p. 727) captured a student’s discomfort with conflict: ‘on an interpersonal level
the partnerships can be a little taxing when you are confronted with like direct
conflict … or you’re working with someone who doesn’t really want to change’. The posi-
tioning of conflict with others as a challenge in partnership can lead to conflict-avoidance
that hinders creativity, learning, empathy, and dialogue that is central to partnership.
This reflection on an extra-curricular partnership project signals the problem of trying
to avoid conflict:
We unintentionally left no space for conflict in our process of partnership. This may have
caused our various feelings of frustration, slow progress, and tension through a lack of open
and honest communication, and accountability … Perhaps more importantly, we realised
this ‘niceness’ may have inhibited our capacity for learning. (Mercer-Mapstone, Dvorakova,
Groenendijk, et al., 2017, p. 6)

Interpersonal conflict is complex to navigate when it is between students. Partnership

between students and lecturers adds another layer of complexity to interpersonal conflict.
Our study suggests students can navigate this form of conflict, and the process of doing
so is educative. For example, a student talked about voting for an earlier deadline for an
assessment task because it suited her preference. After listening to someone in the class
explain their job commitments, the student admitted she did not have a job and had not
considered that other class members did. In her case, new empathy was a by-product of
the conflict introduced by negotiating deadlines. Through the process of navigating
conflict in the class, Luke felt he could approach the teacher with any issues. Yet, there
was qualitative variation in how the students experienced conflict. How students experi-
ence conflict in partnership in our study demonstrates that conflict is in the eye of the
beholder, and this variation warrants further scholarly consideration.

The potentially generative role of conflict

Calling into question the assumed power dynamics is the premise of theorisations of
learner-teacher partnership praxis (Matthews, Cook-Sather, et al., 2019). Navigating
conflict entrenched in power structures, personal histories, and cultural norms is a
 HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT 11

much-needed conversation that is only starting to appear explicitly within the partner-
ship community. Students having the opportunity to learn how to navigate conflict –
through partnership that privileges dialogue, empathy, and reciprocity – is important
in today’s world where increased divisiveness, othering, and intolerance of differing
views are gaining traction in democratic societies. Conflict is also inherent in working
life, which is entangled with power and gender, and central to innovation typically
framed as ‘fun’ and ‘creative’ yet is ‘very taxing’ and ‘uncomfortable’ (Hill et al., 2014).
Yet, Donahue (2012) argued that most university classrooms are devoid of conflict
and as a result are lacking in meaningful learning opportunities for students to gain
deeper insights into themselves and others, and to understand how navigating conflict
underpins democratic citizenship. Scholars in the pedagogical partnership community
are beginning to recognise the generative role of conflict and navigating pedagogical dis-
agreements that inherently unfold through dialogue and reflection (Abbot & Cook-
Sather, 2020).
Explicitly modelling partnership practices in the classroom, including how lecturers
frame and respond to conflict arising as students take on greater ownership for the cur-
riculum, opens up space for growth and transformation where learning has an intellec-
tual and moral purpose to prepare students to be members within civilised democratic
societies.

Implications for practices within an expansive model of partnership

Engaging students as partners should be understood as an expansive model where an
array of practices can be enacted both in and out of the classroom. Many students and
staff, including institutional leaders, are conceptualising models of partnership as
extra-curricular practices (Matthews, Dwyer, et al., 2018; Mercer-Mapstone, Dvorakova,
Matthews, et al., 2017). Yet, as more students experience what it feels like to be treated as
a partner through these extra-curricular programs, they will notice it lacking in their
classrooms (Dwyer, 2018). Thus, nurturing co-creation in partnership classrooms (or
whole-class co-creation or co-creation in the curriculum, depending on your preferred
language) means supporting academics in shifting their beliefs about the role of students
in curriculum (Cook-Sather, Matthews, et al., 2019). This shift suggests substantial
rethinking of traditional models of professional development for university teachers
towards those that privilege curriculum negotiation (Bron et al., 2016).

Limitations and future research

Our study was conducted with mostly females predominantly from white, middle-class
backgrounds in a final year primary education undergraduate degree. This is the
typical demographic of teacher education programs in Australia and other anglophone
countries. There is a need to understand how students from historically marginalised
communities experience and make sense of classroom-based partnership, and particu-
larly the conflict that arises in such forms of partnership. Another point of consideration
is the participants themselves, who arguably held greater insights into pedagogical prac-
tices and theories, as final year students in an education degree program, compared with
other cohorts of students. How might this study translate to other disciplines, and would
12 N. GODBOLD ET AL.

conflict be similar or different? This is just one question worthy of future research atten-
tion. Finally, while there is some research, deeper insights into how lecturers face up to
bringing conflict into the classroom and the pedagogical approaches they draw on to
enable conflict to be generative through partnership practices would enrich the
growing scholarship. This extends to research focused on changing university teachers’
attitudes linked to professional development models that facilitate these forms of part-
nership and university policies that encourage and recognise these practices through pro-
motion processes.

Conclusion
Engaging in student–faculty partnerships, as Woolmer (2018, p. 4) asserts, is risky ‘as
entering into collaborations that are intentionally negotiable necessitates some uncer-
tainty. Where there is uncertainty, there is risk’. Furthermore, uncertainty and nego-
tiability arising from a commitment to shared decision making creates conflict and
thus necessitates explicit theorisation of conflict in partnership praxis. To bring partner-
ship practices into the classroom increases the likelihood that internal conflict and
conflict in the learner-teacher relationship will emerge. Naming and acknowledging its
role means conflict can be generative (Abbot & Cook-Sather, 2020) rather than stultify-
ing, thereby engendering meaningful learning and teaching partnerships within univer-
sity learning communities and complex civilised societies.

Acknowledgements
We are grateful to colleagues who acted as critical friends, offering insights and counterviews that
enhanced this article: Catherine Bovill, Abbi Flint, Niamh Moore-Cherry, Caelan Rafferty, and
Cherie Woolmer who read an initial draft; and Alison Cook-Sather who read later drafts.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding
The University of Queensland ‘Undergraduate Research Scholars’ and ‘Student-Staff Partnership’
schemes provided funding for the two student co-authors.

ORCID
Nattalia Godbold http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4730-9887
Kelly E. Matthews http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6563-4405

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