In Pedagogical Partnerships: A How-To Guide for Faculty, Students, and Academic Developers in Higher Education, we offer information, suggestions for discussion, and advice regarding the development of pedagogical partnership programs focused on classroom practice and curriculum design and redesign. In this resource, we offer a checklist for you to use to ensure that you have considered the many important aspects of developing a partnership program.

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  • Consider why you want to develop a pedagogical partnership program and what might get in the way:
    • Explore the research on the benefits and challenges of pedagogical partnership
    • Articulate explicit and implicit reasons for developing a pedagogical partnership program
    • Identify key assumptions and expectations that participants might bring, including threshold concepts to partnership
  • Decide what kind of partnership program is right for your context:
    • Ask yourself key questions about: the meaning of partnership; conceptual frames for partnership; aim, scale, and time frame; and emotions, attitudes, behaviors, and values conducive to partnership
    • Explore the range of pedagogical partnership programs currently under development and already established at other institutions
  • Think through how to situate and structure the program, get started, and plan for sustainability:
    • Consider how your program will fit into the larger institution (e.g., in relation to reporting, other programs that might or might not have partnership approaches, and promotion and tenure)
    • Identify a small group of confident, open, collaborative faculty and students to pilot the program
    • Decide how you will conceptualize and compensate student and faculty partners’ work (e.g., with pay, with course credit, through fellowships)
    • Choose names for your program and its participants
    • Consider creating [temporary] positions, such as post-baccalaureate fellow, to help launch or further develop a partnership program
    • Consider the ways that program directors, faculty, and student partners can plan for sustainability
  • Decide on the shared responsibilities of facilitating pedagogical partnerships
    • Develop a clear concept of facilitation in pedagogical partnership (linked to the meaning of partnership; conceptual frames for partnership; and emotions, attitudes, behaviors, and values)
    • Clarify shared roles and responsibilities of all participants in partnership
    • Identify overarching attitudes and approaches to be embraced
  • Create an approach to inviting and supporting participants:
    • Develop an approach to inviting and responding to prospective participants once the program is launched
    • Identify approaches to supporting participants as their partnerships unfold
    • Clarify steps in establishing, sustaining, and concluding classroom-focused pedagogical partnerships
    • Select techniques student and faculty partners can use in their classroom-focused partnership work
    • Decide what forms curriculum-focused pedagogical partnerships might take
  • Prepare for managing logistical and emotional challenges of partnership 
    • Consider scheduling demands
    • Attend to the diversity of participants’ identities and roles
    • Acknowledge the emotional labor of partnership
    • Anticipate challenges
  • Develop ways to assess pedagogical partnership work
    • Identify approaches to assess partnerships as they unfold
    • Select approaches to assessing the process and outcomes of partnership work at the individual, programmatic, and institutional levels