ABSTRACT
The process of writing a chapter about student-faculty partnerships (like the practice of such partnerships in the scholarship of teaching and learning [SoTL]) is no simple task. In an effort to honor multiple perspectives, this chapter begins with parallel commentaries. Following these commentaries, the theoretical argument is developed. The chapter reveals two common problems that occur when students perceive professors as having the majority of the power and responsibility to educate. First, the assumption that professors possess all the course-related knowledge and that students have none contributes to a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to learn—that learning essentially is the transfer of knowledge, a finite set of facts, from professor to student, rather than a process that allows examination and making meaning from knowledge. Second, students do not see their fellow classmates as offering unique and valuable perspectives. The chapter concludes with a reflection on student-faculty partnerships in the context of existing SoTL literature.
