 Probably tell that I'm gonna cheat a little bit in that I just recorded this earlier And that's so that I can keep to time because every time I give a presentation, especially online I'm really renowned for going like way over my time limit So I've recorded myself and time myself to a tee and so hopefully I can play this Video to you and then have some time to answer questions But if you like please like as we go if there's anything that comes up that you want to ask any questions about Please do type into the chat and I'll try and address those at the end And we should have a couple of minutes for questions. So I'm going to play this now and hope for the best Hi, my name is Aidan. It's a pleasure to be talking to you today I've really enjoyed some of the themes of the conference particularly thinking around Democracy and democratic participation and I really want to dive into that today in my presentation on from partnerships to governance So I'm a PhD student in the College of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University And I'm about five weeks away from submitting my PhD thesis. So this presentation is going to draw a lot on The empirical data that I collected during the course of my PhD I'd like to acknowledge that I speak to you today from the lands of the Ghana people of the Adelaide Plains Land which was never ceded the Ghana people have Continuing and significant relationships to lands waters and sky in Adelaide and their culture heritage and beliefs are still important today I wish to pay my respects to those who walked before Elders past and present and finally I'd like to extend my acknowledgement to any Indigenous colleagues here with us today. I Want to talk to you about students University and community in particular I want to dial down to the relationship between students University and community and I want to think about students in terms of participation There are five broad categories that I'm going to talk through and I'll dive into each one of these I think it's important to think about our definitions as we go and particularly Thinking about the last day of our conference I think some of those key terms and definitions have sort of started to surface And I'd like to cement some of those down in this presentation So contextualizing student participation Thinking about and rethinking the teach-in which is a tool of the student activist of the 1960s and I'll talk more about that in a moment Unpack student expectations and their understanding of participation in governance from the empirical data that I've collected and Build a bit of a relationship between students as partners grassroots educational movements and students voices in governance Finally, I want to put forward a bit of an imperative for change in the sector so when I talk to people a Mythology about student activism became really clear So as soon as I started to say, you know, my PhD is in activism people who hadn't necessarily lived through it would snap in their Mind straight to this moment of all the 1960s students with their fist in the air and megaphone in one hand You know waving a banner so three-handed student at this point But we you know, we start to see this real image of what a student activist is But actually all the way from the 1960s so little who did a embedded ethnography over two years 1968 1969 in a university in Melbourne spoke about sort of your regular student body those that were turning up to try and get their degree Actually not engaging with the student activism of the day though student activism was rife and incredibly prevalent during the 1960s and 70s Students who were just rocking up to get their work done were not always necessarily part of the student activism and so the The student activists had to come up with ways to get the regular students involved in their protests their demonstrations Their letter writing etc. So they're an interesting tool emerges But I want to just quickly stop and conceptualize student participation And I think this is useful in terms of thinking about our definitions and thinking about what students do in a university So number one as I've somewhat hinted, you know that basic involvement that I am going to university to get my degree I'm going to go to my shoots. I'm going to talk to my peers in my class. I'm going to do my assignments Eventually I'm going to graduate and I'm going to go out into the world and you know do whatever it is that my degree equipped me to do The second group is the student activists those that are you know fist in air megaphone in hand But also the student activists are those that are often very visible on campus, right? You know as you're walking in often they'll be trying to get you to sign a petition or To read some literature or you know these kinds of things Then there's the student politicians, which is you know a third group not necessarily distinct from group two in every way But somewhat discreet in that the student politicians are often embedded in structures of governance and operations in the university They've usually got some kind of alignment with a political party typically in Australia. That's the labor party And they have particularly strong views about what education is for what they're doing on campus And for why they're holding roles on the campus And number four is the student power movement and the student power movement has been somewhat quiet Sort of since that 1960s period But it's emerging again in the form of partnership and these are students who are really interested in the actual activities The teaching and learning that goes on in a university and the structures that support that right and I'll talk about this a little bit more Of course, none of these groups are exclusive You know you could be a member of one and four and two and three You know there's there's no specific way that you have to conceptualize this And I'm also not asserting that these are the only categories of students or student participation these are just some Really concrete categories that came out of what I've collected since all the way across since the 1966 through to 2021 And if we revisit that idea from little that the Student activists had to convince other students right and this is we're going to lead into the teaching We can see you know in student student magazines and student publications these calls for students to do things So in 1972 the empire times published a Pull out a four sheet There was a poster that they stuck on columns and things to try and ask students to become involved in the union But also to become involved in university government Right, and so this was a really serious call to action for students to get them involved in participatory governance at the university And so again that onus falls back to the student But the student activists particularly thinking about that 1960s period They were really successful at converting people to their cause now Of course you could argue that they had an important cause, you know, there was a there was a big war going on and you know You could rally people to Supporting peace is a you know, that's a big movement. It's part of something really large But the student activists themselves were really clever and strategic about how they encouraged people to participate with them And it was in these beginnings that the teaching emerged and the teaching is this tool whereby A group of student activists would run around the campus and pull students into an empty lecture theatre And they would set up this room and they would give a little bit of a short presentation about, you know, the state of affairs probably some You know some tragic moments that had happened in the war and things like that and they would talk about some really hot political issues they Try to educate their fellow students about what was going on But the important second part of this relation was that the students in the room actually fed back to those activists and so there was a reciprocal democratic Conversation happening in between these people and this was really important because it's both educational So it's happening on a university campus. It's an educational thing But it's also about building politics that listened to students perspectives amongst the students So the teaching is an interesting phenomena And it became a very powerful useful political tool Which featured which featured at its core a decentralized So there's no one person in charge of it a dialogic because it was a relation between people Androgogic in the sense that there was some teaching going on political because it was about the war And purposive in that they wanted an outcome out of these these teaching spaces And so again returning to that, you know that onus that little talks about, you know It's important to think about how we engage students and now the teaching has largely disappeared It still occurs, you know in Chile and some places around the world Where there's some more radical student Necessity for radical student participation, but the teaching largely has disappeared And so, you know, we think now about well, what's what's an interesting parallel? And I would assert here that staff creating opportunities for students to become partners in their learning and teaching Is a similar opening of a conversation and androgogic space Which creates the opportunity for students to have a say about their assessment about their curriculum and more But at its face value students as partners in learning and teaching Doesn't actually prepare students for fulsome democratic participation. It's not quite doing the same thing. You know, it's not it's not a peace movement Right, but it does start to engage students in that understanding about what is it that the university does and What's my place in it and what can I say and what can I do? It also creates networks between students, which is important Okay, I'm going to leave students as partners there for just a moment And I want to talk about students participation in committees governance working groups, etc For simplicity's sake. I'm just going to call this governance structures So I spoke to a lot of participants about The issues that they faced and key among those were power dynamics, right? They felt that they had something that they could say but while they were sitting on a committee You know an important governance committee often a faculty committee or a university committee They couldn't really speak up about their issues because well, it wasn't on the agenda and it didn't quite fit And you know, I'm in a room with people who are, you know, they really know what they're doing They're all professors, you know, this is a high high tension and high power dynamic space, right? So there was some, you know, some issues around How comfortable they felt participating In addition, uh, when we think about who's chosen for representative structures There there was some there were some concerns from students about, you know Well, only those students that are elected to Student government positions. So student union student association and student guild positions They're the ones that are getting all of the say and they don't represent me, you know And of course, this isn't a universal issue But thinking about who we're choosing to represent students is a really important part of this dynamic And then for those that aren't part of that, um, that student politics group who are potentially receiving more training and more support for their participation Was the students who are not receiving that support, right? So the students that were chosen to participate in a in a governance space But then weren't supported through training or networks to really make their voice flourish and and to really be active contributors in a meaningful way So to address this at flinders and this is not unique to flinders by any means, um, a couple of people devised a Uh a strategy to engage students to build the democratic capacity address some of those power imbalances though, of course acknowledging that, you know academics are always going to have a bit more power than the student, right And to build representative structures and in this way in uh, you know, college of science and engineering using student partnership approaches in learning and teaching Funneling that and supplementing that not linearly, but you know, sort of supporting side by side with a representative training program Created a conduit of student community across a range of different topics and courses Into representative structures And so that's been a really important way to start to engage students beyond just, you know What's the learning and teaching relation? You know, can I influence my assessment? Can I influence the curriculum into how can I influence the design and structure? Around this and then the structure of the university around that And so I think this gives us a bit of a necessity for revisioning students as partners So that it builds support for democratic governance and student ownership of initiative in the university, right So empowering students to actually have the first say rather than having an academic initiated And of course cook say that et al, you know Big big seminal authors in the student partnership space talked about the possibility of partnership opening these doors Creating the conditions for curiosity common inquiry and breaking down those power imbalances between students and staff Student initiative then supported through learning and teaching partnership and its inherent reward, right? Getting to choose your own assessment. It can be really rewarding then leads to a cycle of student representative support But students need to own that initiative and partnership while it provides a gateway to doing that is often academic initiated What's the solution and what can we think about this? We've got five key things. So first empower student networks that already exist and empower them to start to exist Deputize students to take over classes and committees give them the opportunities to speak Encourage or run if you're a student the teaching Provide spaces for students to teach each other about university structures. We'll enable that passing down of knowledge And five reward student participation. How might you do that? For staff provide an option topic in a degree to give them course credit for their participation in governance partnership representation Give students degree credit for participation in large-scale university projects Align learning outcomes with androg logic leadership, right? We know that equipping students with the ability to To speak and to lead is useful when they're in industry when they're in the public and private sector You know when they're out in community, right? So, you know, align your learning outcomes around those spaces Speak to the value of working in educative modes, right to talk about how useful it is to be able to teach Provide opportunities for students to pitch innovation and change and pay students for their contributions Ensure students aren't alone in governance structures. So make sure there's more than just one But also support them to find the networks so that they can create dialogue between more students and become more democratic and more open For students take opportunities to mentor each other, right? If you're a third-year mentor of first year Seize that opportunity. They're really important. Share your understandings of university governance and the landscape, right? That passing down of knowledge is really important Speak to friends about the value of working in partnership Practice active collaboration with your peers Engage in pathways to governance and partnership And encourage democratic principles amongst peers Especially in clubs and societies in src and union positions Open the door to more distributed Active participation from all of the students, right? It's not democracy unless everybody's getting involved There are a range of different experiences and i'm not going to go into reading all of these There are a range of different experiences that students have at university and it's beyond the classroom interaction, right? They might have a really positive learning and teaching experience But we really want to open that door to more fulsome participation I don't think it's radical to say that we want students to be able to engage with democracy We live in a democracy So if we can use universities as a tool to support students to start that engagement Then we have real potential to do something really good for the world Student participation has never been stronger. I talked briefly about that mythology of the 1960s student with the fist in the air The long hair, you know That that was a radical time But student participation has grown, right? And it's really making a resurgence now So it's really important to get involved in these kinds of of of movements At the heart of our universities, which are public institutions Resides a democratic necessity from law medicine arts and chemistry all over the university There is a need to create leaders for tomorrow And together we can rethink the future of the university for people and the planet and for a better democracy Okay, that's all I have time for I'm going to be in the session now to take some questions But if we don't have time, please stay in touch by email and I'll paste these links into the chat But you can also revisit this presentation. I've got some references and things that are sort of tucked below the slides So please feel free to dive in And I'll now take some questions Hello and thank you For listening to me from earlier I think I had a question in here Which I found it kind of popped up in the side While I was talking and now I think it's disappeared on me So Luke was asking what do you think about the difference between student unions? Okay, the university of Sydney union versus students as partners is being Through the institutional framework beneficial or staying independent and the typical union movement I think that's a that's a really interesting and like fundamental question So if we can if we can break that down into sort of poo parts because I think you know If we actually consider students as partners to be independent from student unions guilds associations While if we consider those two things to be Separate things there are unique benefits to both, right? I think one of the problems is that many of the university union skills that i'm just going to call them unions They're often not independent from the university, right? They are often particularly after a voluntary student unionism. They have actually been incorporated back in the universities And while they have this sort of general aura of being perceived as an independent Party that can support students. They're often actually almost entirely controlled The the university because they're incorporated body of the university which actually puts them at a significant disadvantage Whereas student partnership when it starts with those important reciprocal values those values around democracy and things like that They start the relationship on a more even playing field, right? Because if you're in the student union as an independent if it is an independent union But if you're in the you know an independent student union you are automatically placed below in terms of your power you're placed below a university structure itself Whereas students as partners. I think is a stronger starting place because it starts from this Place of everybody's coming to this with a shared set of values We've also Or we're coming to agree on a set of values that mean this is how we're going to work together This is what we're going to do together. And so I think you know Actually, there probably is some some arrangement between those two things that can be really beneficial But at the moment, I don't think from the people that I've spoken to I don't think that's really been realized, you know in a full some way that that connection with partnership and unions I think it's a bit uncomfortable. So, you know, it's yeah, it's an interesting it's an interesting conundrum And I'm just sorry. I'm just it's really It's hard to like read and then talk Thank you everybody for your Comments and please feel free if you just want to like if you have a question And you just want to throw your mic on and ask I'm like more than happy to just take any questions or comments that way as well Actually I've got these some links here as well. So these are just from the end of that Presentation. So please feel free to get in touch with me Um via email particularly like if you've got any questions about my research and what I've been doing or if you've got That you've been doing that you'd like to share like I'm really happy to sort of Hear from people that are doing different things. I'm currently on our university council as a student rep and so I'm really interested in ways of The previous presentation, you know, like getting that ball rolling to have a Raw to governance structure sitting under university council, for example sake Which includes students in a really active way that that's a really cool thing. So, you know, it's great to have these opportunities to share Hear from people and I'm just sort of keenly aware that this is a really Big and diverse space and there are a lot of people doing a lot of things So my inbox is always open to anybody with any ideas or Practice that they wanted to share and I'm happy to sort of give over anything that I have that I can give to help So, yeah, thank you If there's no other questions, um, I reckon we might all just have like a couple of minutes To like just like take a breather and then we can go back into that other room. Um, so thank you again for coming and listening and I'm gonna be quiet now Thank you, Aiden I'll turn my mic on because I know what it's like when you're in a room. I'm really not sure Great presentation Thanks, Aiden. That was brilliant. I couldn't think of a question fast enough, but I will follow you up Thanks, Kate Likewise, I As you were speaking I was trying to jot down notes and Questions came up and then you made a really fantastic point and I Then suddenly lost that question in my head and went on to a new one So I couldn't quite keep up But I was making a lot of parallels with what you were saying and what the research was suggesting And what you found and a lot of the topics that were discussed earlier today One of them was around the barrier of I suppose what I would see it as intimidation as a student perspective going into the space of governance and decision making Within a structure. I think that can be a huge barrier to students going and how she on Tuesday made that comment as well of Students when it's just a level of voice and just feedback And it doesn't go further to the other two dimensions It can be just like well, I'm not the perfect person for that and they take a step back So I think that's maybe an ongoing challenge that will all be facing