A dyadic analysis of pedagogical partnerships

A substantive body of literature demonstrates the transformative power of pedagogical partnership. In this study, we explore the relational dynamics that underpin pedagogical partnership. Informed by thematic analyses of reflections from 3 years of faculty-student partnerships, we present three pedagogical partnership relational typologies—bidirectional, sounding board, and affirmational. We then share a dyadic analysis exploring partners’ alignment or misalignment in their views of their relationship and explore the associations between relational typology, alignment, and partnership outcomes. We find that student partners were more likely to perceive their partnerships as bidirectional, while faculty partners were more likely to perceive their relationships as sounding boards. Further, student and faculty partners in bidirectional partnerships were most likely to reap individual, relational, and curricular partnership outcomes. Our discussion highlights implications of relational alignment for pedagogical partnership outcomes and the need to attend to relationality, power hierarchies, and partner identities in pedagogical partnership programs.