Getting our hands dirty with research: student insight into collaborative educational research

AUTHORS:

Rebecca Suart (R.M.Suart@warwick.ac.uk) Warwick University
Eva Knapova (eva.knapova@stu.mmu.ac.uk) Manchester Metropolitan University

This paper shares the experience of a group of education studies students from three partner universities who have been involved in a collaborative research project. The study takes a ‘student-lecturer’ collaborative approach to explore students’ and academics’ attitudes to employability on education studies degrees. Our discussion addresses the benefits gained by students as co-researchers considering their experience constructing knowledge with both lecturers from partner institutions and the insights gained from students on the same degree. Firstly, we will explain how the power dynamics between ‘lecturer as expert’ in the initial stages of the project shifted to a more equal team as students became more comfortable and confident in the contribution they could make. As student researchers we were able to work in the larger project cohort, across universities and with other academics to gain invaluable insights into the world of academia. These experiences have diversified our thinking in ways that would not have been achievable without access to a broad range of views from teams/lecturers and from the experience of visiting different universities. Finally we conclude with a discussion about how this process has benefited us personally and how we plan to use this experience in the future.