ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the role of pragmatic philosophy in moving towards a supportive culture for student–staff partnership. Many advocates of partnership approaches base their arguments in a critical pedagogy tradition. While we agree with this as an end goal of partnership, we believe that we live in a neo-liberal society and need to gradually shift this position to bring people and practices with us. We consider the importance of recognising our context to create both partnership practices that are considered successful and the conditions under which they can proliferate. We discuss the importance of working to change this context to one that is more supportive of redistributing power towards students. We focus on gatekeepers to institutional partnership schemes to discuss how they can both create protective spaces for partnerships and their role in bringing about cultural change.
