Introduction

That relationships matter in educational settings, particularly between the learner and the teacher, has a long and rich scholarly foundation from Dewey (1916) to Giroux (1983) and hooks (1994). In higher education, there is a now a strong evidence-base that relationship-rich educational practices and relational pedagogies foster student engagement and belonging through learner-teacher interactions (Coates et al., 2022; Felten & Lambert, 2020). One such approach to translate research to practice is the growing movement to engage students as partners (SaP) in learning and teaching with tertiary teaching staff both in and out of the classroom (Bovill, 2020a). As a contested concept, many scholars draw on Cook-Sather and colleagues’ (2014) work to define learner-teacher partnership as ‘a collaborative, reciprocal process through which all participants have the opportunity to contribute equally, although not necessarily in the same ways, to curricular or pedagogical conceptualisation, decision-making, implementation, investigation, or analysis’. Healey and colleagues (2014) intentionally did not provide a definition, instead discussing SaP as a re-positioning of students, and thus their pedagogical relationships, as a partnership unfolding through activities of co-creation, co-inquiry, co-teaching, and co-designing. Furthermore, they distinguished student engagement and SaP by arguing that SaP is always a form of student engagement but that forms of student engagement are not always SaP (ibid). Theorisations of partnership practices call into question assumed identities of, and power dynamics between, learners and teachers in higher education (Matthews et al., 2018) based on values including mutual respect, shared responsibility or accountability, and reciprocity (Cook-Sather et al., 2014; Healey et al., 2014). Yet, SaP is a context-dependent and culturally situated practice with calls for research on SaP beyond the borders of Anglophone countries (Green, 2019a).

Research is now emerging on SaP in Asia (Dai et al., 2021; Liang et al., 2020). For example, Liang and Matthews (2021b) surveyed several hundred undergraduate students and teachers from three Chinese universities with most participants indicating the importance of partnership activities and identifying that some such activities were already occurring in classroom contexts. In a qualitative study, Kaur and Yong Bing (2020, p. 3) investigated power relation between students and academics in pedagogical partnership practices in Malaysia and found that students ‘are taught at a young age to show respect, listen, and obey, rather than question them [the teachers]’, indicating cultural dissonance in how SaP values and theories unfold in Asian tertiary educational settings. A scoping review of SaP in Asia revealed challenges associated with the cultural context of Confucianism, arguing that research should ‘explore the already existing teaching and learning models in Asia that reflect the nature of SaP as a relational pedagogical practice where learners and teachers interact based on the values of partnership but are not named as such’ (Liang & Matthews, 2021a, p. 563).

Responding to calls for both more research on SaP outside of Anglophone countries and research that is culturally situated in local contexts, this study investigates how students in Hong Kong understand pedagogical relationships between students and teachers. Moreover, we explore student interactions with teachers to illustrate how the values of SaP are understood and enacted in the Hong Kong context that has both western and Chinese Confucian sociocultural heritages. This paper starts with an overview of SaP and the specific context of Hong Kong HE, which we discuss as a hybrid cultural context. Then, we present the research design and findings before discussing implications for learner-teacher pedagogical relationships as a form of SaP specific to Hong Kong.

Overall, the study contributes collective insight into SaP and movements toward relationship-rich educational practices as a global body of scholarship. In doing so, we grow the body of research on student engagement and partnership in Asia. Importantly, the findings signal the unique cultural context of Hong Kong that is shaping how students see themselves and how they imagine forms of pedagogical relationships that will underpin their learning and engagement in HE.

Engaging students as partners: a relational learner-teacher identity perspective

Engaging students and teachers as partners in pedagogical practices is arguably becoming significant in the HE system (Healey et al., 2014). SaP is a relational pedagogy that shifts the traditional identity of students and teachers, and relationships between them (Bovill, 2020b; Matthews, 2017). The contested nature of SaP means there is not a shared understanding of partnership in theory, practice, or terminology (Cook-Sather et al., 2018). For the purpose of this study, where SaP is being investigated in a context where both the terminology and practices are likely unfamiliar, we adopt an expansive notion of learner-teacher partnership arising from historical threads to student voice scholarship, as recently argued by Matthews and Dollinger (2022). In doing so, we are focused on the process of differing formulations of learner-teacher interactions that upend and disrupt taken-for-granted identities of students and educators in higher education settings. By adopting a relational learner-teacher identity lens of SaP, as is found to be commonplace in theorisations of SaP in practice (Matthews et al., 2018), the notion of SaP becomes dynamic and evolving. Such a lens keeps our research alive to differing understandings and formulations of SaP in Hong Kong.

Through SaP practices, students and teachers change their traditional mindset toward education. Ideally, students could become agents that actively engage in pedagogical design and practices. Therefore, more importantly, teachers may consider students as agentic, trusted, and supportive partners able to contribute to teaching and learning practices with active attitudes and novel approaches via ongoing conversations with teachers. By establishing mutual trust, students and teachers work together in an inclusive, supportive, authentic, respectful, and agentic way to improve teaching and learning outcomes (Cook-Sather et al., 2014; Healey et al., 2014; Matthews, 2017). In some instances, students and teachers co-design courses and teaching strategies to enhance the quality of education while also enhancing student agency and participation of learning (Lubicz-Nawrocka & Bovill, 2021).

The ethos of SaP is context-dependent (Healey & Healey, 2018) and should be culturally informed (Cook-Sather et al., in press). The current literature shows that most SaP studies are mainly conducted in the Anglophone context and SaP in other regions is still under-researched, which risks a universalism of SaP without enough explorations of non-western regions (Marquis et al., 2017). Therefore, scholars called for exploring the conceptions of SaP outside of Anglophone context. The concept of ‘partnership’ is complex to translate, which may cause various understandings, for example, sexual relationships in Germany (Cook-Sather et al., 2018). The idea of SaP in education, and the language of partnership, is unaware and uncertain even in many Anglophone countries. For example, in Australia, Matthews et al. (2017) found that many Australian students felt unfamiliar with the concept and language of SaP. Rather than saying the word ‘SaP/partnership’, Matthews et al. (2017) discussed and presented SaP practices (e.g. co-designing course materials, students observing classes and offering feedback to teachers) in relation to curricular design, pedagogical practices, and assessment. This research adopts that approach by focusing on practices instead of assuming understanding of the term SaP.

The exploration of Hong Kong university students’ understanding of their relationships with teachers adds novel insight to the emerging research on SaP in Asia that allows for the uniqueness of specific cultural norms to surface:

The development of SaP in Asia is currently in its infancy, and many researchers were mainly focused on exploring practices to observe and understand the possibility of SaP inspired by western practices… there was a clear sense that SaP is challenging, and will be challenged by, conventional higher education norms currently constructing learner-teacher interactions in Asian countries. (Liang & Matthews, 2021a, p. 561)

We now briefly analyse the unique context of Hong Kong higher education.

The unique context of Hong Kong higher education

In the cultural aspect, Hong Kong, as a former British colonised international city, has been significantly influenced by the western cultural norms. As a capitalistic society, influenced by the globalisation and neoliberalism, Hong Kong society emphasises individualism and marketisation (Mok, 2014). On the one hand, the individual competitive drive and achievement motivation that emphasise freedom and creativity are deeply rooted as a cultural phenomenon in Hong Kong (Kember, 2016). On the other hand, with the rise of marketisation and managerialism, both individual and public sectors in Hong Kong paid increasing attention to financial profit chasing, value for money, and cost-effectiveness (Mok, 2014). For example, while most Hong Kong institutions are publicly funded universities, they also operate various programmes, especially at the postgraduate master’s level, to make profits. The cost for such programmes in Hong Kong universities is usually higher than the mainland Chinese universities. In mainland China, many master’s students can study for a professional master’s degree at a much lower cost or research master’s programme with financial support from the university and government that may cover all the tuition fees. While the capitalistic traditions influence Hong Kong’s higher education sector, it also shares many similarities with mainland China from a cultural perspective.

After returning to China in 1997, the Confucius Heritage Culture (CHC) and Chinese sociocultural ideology profoundly impacted Hong Kong society and education, specifically the CHC emphasise on cultivation of self and social collective harmony inherent in the ‘collectivist relational base’ of Chinese sociocultural ideology (Marginson, 2011). As a result, Hong Kong is becoming an in-between space that has a hybridised sociocultural context. Within this complex context, the combination of different cultural values and norms plays significant roles in shaping learner-teacher relationships. Importantly, this situation demands people to critically reflect on the dynamic influence of multi-cultural values in contemporary Hong Kong HE, especially, avoiding stereotyped understanding about ‘Confucian learners’ (Dai, 2020, 2021). As Liang and Matthews (2022) revealed, ‘moving beyond essentialising enables new opportunities or research and practice to arise as partnership praxis translates, evolves, and adapts across and within dynamic cultures’ (p. 1).

In the policy aspect, driven by the neoliberal ideology brought by globalisation, Hong Kong’s HE system demands transformations to respond to internationalisation after massification of HE (Mok & Chan, 2016). As an increasing popular exercise, quality assurance mechanisms were formulated and implemented in Hong Kong universities for assure and enhance the quality of teaching and learning, research, and educational service (Chan, 2017). Led by the University Grants Committee (UGC), the Quality Assurance Committee was established in 2007 to audit eleven focused areas, including curriculum design, pedagogy, assessment, and student engagement that in relation to daily teaching and learning (Chan, 2017). Meanwhile, outcome-based teaching and learning has been encouraged by UGC and integrated into educational activities by Hong Kong universities (Mok & Xiong, 2022). These institutional policies provide pathway of engaging with students as partners in Hong Kong universities, as the growing trend of employing partnership approach we mentioned above. However, this situation also leads the missing of critically exploring the nature and interpretations of partnership shaped by the specific sociocultural context in Hong Kong, instead by dominantly focusing on outcomes. Therefore, whether the SaP initiative could be effectively practiced in the Hong Kong hybridised context is unclear.

To explore this issue, this study aims to explore how postgraduate students describe and understand the learner-teacher relationship in learning at a Hong Kong university. Meanwhile, this study will investigate how the values of engaging with students as partners in learning and teaching are present and enacted in practices and examine how the possibilities of SaP might unfold in Hong Kong. Guided by the overarching question—how do postgraduate students describe and understand their relationships with teachers in the Hong Kong higher education context?—we are contributing the multiple voices of students in Hong Kong, which have not been explored in existing SaP research. This study also responds to the call for cross-cultural investigation of SaP beyond the Anglophone origins (Green, 2019a, b).

Methodology

A qualitative exploratory study was adopted to explore the subjective and rich experiences of students who could share their perceptions of the socio-cultural and entangled constructs of learning and teaching in the Hong Kong context (Merriam, 2009). This study was also shaped by our positionalities as collaborators from universities in Australia, China, and Hong Kong who share a scholarly interest in higher education curriculum and pedagogy. Importantly, as exploratory research seeking to contribute to theorisation and practice in an emerging area of inquiry, we did not set out to draw broader generalisations, but to draw attention to new viewpoints—those of students studying in Hong Kong. Thus, postgraduate students (n = 35) from a research-intensive comprehensive university were invited to participate in this study to share their experiences. These students were studying in a 1-year master’s programme from varying disciplines and their ages are between the ages of 25 and 30 years.

Semi-structured interviews (approximately 1 h) were conducted to collect data after receiving institutional ethical approval from the corresponding author’s university and obtaining informed consent from all participants. Interviews enabled us to explore ‘the lived experience of other people and the meaning they make of that experience’ (Seidman, 2006, p. 9). We also followed the research protocol adopted by Matthews et al. (2017) who also investigated students in Australia with limited understanding of SaP to understand how they perceived the concept and to share any activities that resembled SaP but were not named as such. Thus, the interview questions are about their learning and research experiences in their programmes and their understanding about relationship with academics in teaching and learning process. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. Participants were invited to check their transcriptions to ensure the accuracy. Each participant was assigned a pseudonym.

Data analysis was iterative and ongoing based on the six-staged process of thematic analysis approach from Braun and Clarke (2006, 2021). This method helped us to understand data from different aspects in a reflexive manner. After the inductive analysis, we also conducted a deductive analysis based on the concept of SaP.

Findings

The analysis found that most students were not unfamiliar with the concept of SaP even though some of them may have had experiences of being partners with academics in their learning journeys. This experience was understandable as findings conducted by Liang and Matthews’s (2021a) scoping review of SaP showing very limited SaP research and practices in Asia. Moreover, this study found that most students were studying in a hierarchical and lecturer-dominated mode of curriculum and instruction even though some students have opportunities to engage in some teaching activities. Notably, some students felt they were the university’s ‘customers’, so academics should teach rather than give them too much work. These participants had multiple senses of identity—‘followers’ who studied in a traditional hierarchical model of teaching and learning and ‘customers’ who should be treated as ‘VIPs’ by academics and the university. In the latter cohort, some students believed that academics should teach main contents. However, many of them indicated an active attitude and believed that they should have opportunities to participate in teaching and curricular design activities as they have paid for the service so they should have rights to know the ‘background’ stories. These identities also indicated different power relations between students and academics. Meanwhile, students reflected different types of agency towards the teaching and curricular design participations. The following part will elaborate on these features in detail.

Students as compliant ‘followers’

The analysis shows that most students did not engage in many teaching and learning activities that could reflect the sense of SaP in their study. Regarding to their identity, these students believed that they were ‘followers’ in teaching and learning processes without much engagement with academics. Specifically, their experiences did not indicate clear awareness of becoming ‘partners’ or the potential to engage in teaching activities and other curriculum design works. Most of them believed that learning is to follow academics and did not indicate an active sense of agency to participate in relevant activities. For example, Kevin, who studied sociology, shared:

Teaching activities are mainly lecturer-dominated. I think it is difficult for students to engage in teaching, especially for first- or second-year university students who may be not familiar with their majors. So, it is easier for these students to follow the academics’ teaching to learn the fundamental knowledge.

Similarly, other students (e.g. Jack, Tim, Runa, and Lisa) who studied finance also shared such experiences. Jack shared:

My learning has many theoretical concepts and mathematical content. I think it is challenging for students to engage in the curriculum design and make suggestions to academics about their teaching approaches and assessments.

In contrast, some students (e.g. Bob, Ian, Louis, Scott, Michael, and Cathy) in computer science suggested that they had some opportunities to engage in academics’ projects. While they may have opportunities to contribute some projects, they were still ‘students’ who followed academics’ guidance. In this process, academics still asked them to focus on ‘learning’ through project-based approaches rather than treated them as ‘partners’. Thus, many students still felt a sense of hierarchy in such learning processes. For example, Bob described:

One of my teachers invited me to join his project to do some practical learning, for example, to design an app… Through engaging in such projects, I can improve my programming skills, and have a closer relationship with my teacher.

These experiences suggested most students were ‘followers’ in their learning even though they may engage in some projects. Limited collaborations and interactions that could reflect the practice of SaP have been conducted in teaching and learning processes. In such a setting, academics could hold more powers than students in teaching and learning practices. It seems that while Hong Kong is considered as a city with an internationalised HE system, teaching and learning environment may still follow the traditional pedagogical strategies.

Students as accepting ‘customers’

Some participants (e.g. Peter, George, Kelly, Tom, and Dan) believed that they are ‘customers’ to pay for their education so academics should offer high-quality education rather than ask students to contribute to teaching activities. As Peter (studying in engineering) shared:

Students pay high tuition fee to the university and academics should take full responsibility for arranging teaching activities, curricular, and assessment. As university’s customer, I think students should receive high-quality education services. If students pay for their education and they cannot learn enough useful knowledge, I believe such investments are not valuable for the future development.

Similarly, Tom’s study in psychology mentioned:

While many academics encourage students to get involved in teaching and other related activities, I think many students, including me, may feel tired to engage in these works. I know that students’ experiences and voices are important for academics and universities; however, students do not have the responsibility to teach other peers or design a course. I think students have paid for the university, so academics and other staff should treat students nicely and show their responsibilities in teaching and working processes. They should let most students feel that the money they paid is worth rather than just ‘buy’ a degree. I think it is enough to provide our feedback and suggestions to academics in course evaluation. So, students just follow academics’ teaching in learning.

Compared to the experiences shared by the ‘follower’ cohort that may have less intentions to engage in pedagogical design, some students in this group believed that they had paid their education so they believe they deserve explanation about how decisions are made in pedagogical practices (e.g. course design, assessment, teaching strategies) even though they may not want to impact those decision in depth. Notably, their experiences may indicate a dynamic power relation between students and academics. On the one hand, they expected to gain high-quality educational services as ‘customers’ who should be treated well by academics. On the other hand, some students may still reply on academics and have a disempowered sense of agency to deeply participate in pedagogical practices. These experiences may indicate that marketisation of HE in Hong Kong’s capitalised society seemed to have deep impact on some students’ views towards the pedagogical relationship (Bunce, 2019). However, some of these ‘customers’ had an active attitude to participate in relevant activities rather than mainly ‘wait for’ the high-quality services.

Students as curious ‘customers’

Several students (e.g. Runa, Loa, John, and Anna) suggested that they should have rights to know the ‘background stories’ of teaching activities and the operations of other administrative as university’s customers. For example, John mentioned:

I think we [students] should actively engage in teaching and learning design works if we have such opportunities because we pay a lot to the university and we have rights to know what happens in teaching or other student-related activities. While my school and the university have some student organisations to provide a platform for us to access some information about these issues, most peers cannot deeply participate in relevant activities, for example, course content and assessment design.

This experience may suggest that some student ‘customers’ were willing to participate in pedagogical design and practice. They indicated an active sense of agency to understand the operation of teaching and learning in depth, which is different from the above groups who seemed to mainly ‘wait for feeding’ by academics. While they labelled themselves as university’s ‘customer’, they also attempted to engage in pedagogical practices in the learning journey.

Practically, these students encountered different issues when they were seeking opportunities to participate in relevant activities. Notably, some students felt that it was challenging to deeply engage in course design. For example, Runa shared:

Most students are difficult to participate in course or assessment design. Academics usually do not know who will select their courses. Thus, they may not be able to invite students to join such activities in advance. Meanwhile, we usually have many students (e.g. 30 to 40) per course. So, it is impossible for most of students to participate in course design. In class, many academics may even not know students’ names. While some students may want to know the ‘background stories’, it is very hard to achieve such goals in practices except some academics or university intentionally launch such programmes to let students get involved. Otherwise, I do not think students could deeply participate in such activities in depth.

While some students had active intentions to get involved in teaching and course design activities, several barriers (e.g. the size of class and the sequence and nature of selecting a course) may hinder these practices. The smaller class sizes may allow for student participations in ways that larger classes worked against the possibility of pedagogical partnership practices.

Students as ‘co-teachers’

While many issues may influence student participation in teaching and course design, some students shared that they still can lightly engage in pedagogical practices as ‘co-teachers’. For example, Loa (studying in business) mentioned her experiences as a teaching assistant:

One lecturer invited students to become teaching assistant in his course. I applied and got this opportunity to help the lecturer in teaching process. While I was just a helper, I can closely work with the lecturer in preparing some course contents and helping him manage the course. This experience allowed me to briefly know how the lecturer prepare courses and how to collaborate with him in teaching.

According to Loa’s experiences, some academics may share their ‘power’ with students even though they still followed the traditional hierarchical teaching model. From the student’s perspective, they may shift identity in this process. Loa further discussed this shifting pedagogical practice where the student became a ‘co-teacher’:

I could be a ‘lecturer’ compared to other teaching practices. While the lecturer may still potentially manage the teaching process, his role is slightly changed. In this case, I needed to be responsible for my position. Although I may not be able to perform perfectly as the lecturer, I can try my best to do my works as a participant of teaching and learning. Such an experience will help me learn a lot of new things that do not easily to access if I just follow teachers as a traditional learner. However, such opportunities are very limited and not easy to get for everyone. If university and academics could provide more opportunities to students, that will be great.

This partnership-based teaching occurred because the academic provided an opportunity for students to co-teach in his class. This experience may indicate that this academic could change his role from ‘a traditional vertical power dynamic toward a horizontal power structure by disrupting the assumed identities of the students through inviting students to be co-teachers and co-learners’ (Dai et al., 2021, p. 9). This experience indicated that the traditional lines of the academic and the student are of blurring which could be an example of pedagogical partnership practice in classroom teaching. Such practices illustrated ‘a related reorientation for academic staff from being disciplinary content experts to also being facilitators of learning and shared enquiry’ (Bovill et al., 2016, p. 197). As Matthews et al. (2019b) suggested, such practices indicate a process of shifting power and identities advocated in western theorisations of SaP.

Discussion

This study drew on the viewpoints of students studying in a Hong Kong university to enrich theorisations of SaP, a values-based practice and ethos fostering learner-teacher relationships focused on enhancing learning and teaching in higher education. Several insights emerged from the findings to address the research question: how do postgraduate students describe and understand their relationships with teachers in the Hong Kong higher education context? Our analysis found that students named their relationships with teachers in different ways, which we framed as ‘followers’, ‘customers’, and ‘co-teachers’, that to reflect the dynamic power relationships in teaching and learning practices that emerged in the interviews.

On the one hand, many students believed that they were traditional ‘followers’ in pedagogical practices. This finding is understandable because many students were not familiar with the language or concept of SaP/partnership and most had experience limited to teacher-centred approaches. Similar findings were also reported by Dai et al. (2021) in a study of SaP conducted in the mainland China and align with shifting national HE policy toward more student-centred approaches that recognise the dominance of teacher-centred paradigms across Chinese HE (Sargent & Xiao, 2018; Tan & Reyes, 2016). Yet, the identity that emerged from students in the study as one of ‘followers’ suggests that traditional Confucian values may also influence students’ views towards their roles in teaching and learning. As indicated by Marginson (2021, p. 1), in the hybrid sociocultural context of Hong Kong, ‘Confucian educational precepts prevailed in the home’. The Confucian educational norm strongly associated with students’ identity perception of ‘followers’ is ‘respecting teachers and emphasising the Dao (ways)’, as Lin et al. (2020) emphasised that this norm has been imperceptibly affecting Chinese learner-teacher relationships. Through discussion around the influence of Confucian educational traditions on the shaping of pedagogical partnership in contemporary Chinese university teaching and learning, Liang and Matthews (2022) argued that Chinese students’ respect for teachers is an influential cultural script embodying Confucian value, li (etiquette). Therefore, this explains many student participants in this study from a Hong Kong university also perceived themselves as followers of teachers. This is an inherent understanding of etiquette in learner-teacher relationships that drives students to show respect for teachers, knowledge, and ways of doing things. As Lin et al. (2020) investigated, such situation is normal even when teachers do not intentionally impose their authoritative leadership over students.

On the other hand, an identity as ‘customers’ emerged in the interviews, in some cases, this identity overlapped with that of followers. This identity involved a strong educational interest that was mainly reliant on teachers’ telling and student doing in response. Distinct from ‘followers’, students identifying as customers wanted and expected to be informed about rationales for pedagogical practices. The financial cost of HE in Hong Kong was evoked with regard to a customer identity. For many scholars in the UK, US, Australia, and Canada (Western countries), the idea of students as partners emerged as a counter-narrative to students as customers where education was reduced to a service provider type of transaction in a discourse of neoliberalisation of HE (Matthews and colleagues in Australia, 2019a; Gravett and colleagues in the UK, 2019; Cook-Sather and Felten in US, 2017). Interestingly, the small but growing body of research on SaP in Asia, largely mainland China, has not revealed a narrative of students as customers or costs as a factor shaping educational relationships. For example, interviewing post-graduate students in a top-tier Beijing university on pedagogical relationships, Dai et al. (2021) did not find that students discussion of cost or customers-like frames of reference. In a larger study of undergraduate students and academics at three mainland China universities, pedagogical interactions and relationships were framed in terms of followership and collective ethos for the common good but not in terms of transactional or financially-framed interaction (Liang & Matthews, 2023).

The findings of this study reveal that neoliberalised and marketised contexts in the Hong Kong higher education sector are influencing students’ identities. At the same time, the sense of being a ‘customer’ involved being a ‘follower’ in everyday educational settings. That students have multiple identities, some seemingly contradictory, has been noted. For example, a study of Australian students and staff conceptions of SaP drew on Barnett’s (2010) premise that ‘student as customer’ might not be as problematic as often presented due to students being more motivated by their financial investment in HE (Matthews et al., 2018). However, empirical research in the UK has found students who see themselves as consumers and customers perform worse academically compared to other student cohorts (Bunce et al., 2017).

We propose that the follower/customer overlapping identities observed in this study of postgraduate students in Hong Kong reflects that of ‘pedagogical in-betweeners’ as students navigate dynamic understandings of their student identities and pedagogical relationships with teaching staff shaped by their sociocultural and educational heritages. As pedagogical in-betweeners, the customer identity also overlapped with that of co-teachers for some students in the study. Similar to studies in western contexts (Bunce, 2019), this cohort reflects an active agency to engage in teaching and learning practices as student partners despite (maybe because of) the many practical issues (e.g. class size). This finding is in line with studies conducted in other educational settings, for example, in Australia. As Matthews et al. (2018) found, a smaller group of students may be easier for partnering with students for academics in teaching.

Partnership and notions of pedagogical relationships infer a closeness (a precursor to SaP) where the other people involved certainly would know each other’s name (at the very least), which in educational contexts is increasing challenging for teachers to do as enrolments and class sizes grow (Dai et al., 2021). At the same time, some students indicated a sense of ‘pedagogical partner’ as they gained some opportunities to engage in co-teaching processes (Loa), disciplinary co-design (Bob), and shaping classroom practices in ways that disrupted taken-for-granted (for the people in the study) learner-teacher identities. Each of these approaches suggests a differing pedagogical motivation as they differ slightly, yet they do align with Healey and colleagues (2014) SaP framework where the process of partnership (enactment of values and shifting of learner-teacher identities) unfolds in varying domains (discipline-based knowledge and inquiry; classroom-based learning and assessment; curriculum consultation; institutional research).

Such findings may suggest that lecturers’ views about the role of students significantly influenced the possibility of partnership-based engagement (Dai & Matthews, 2022). Meanwhile, this experience also reflects a possible shift of ‘power’ in teaching and learning practices. Thus, these experiences from ‘customers’ who attempted to deeply engage in the teaching and learning indicate the possibility of conducting SaP practices in the Hong Kong HE context, which is actively promoting student-centred pedagogical approaches (Yu & Lee, 2018).

These different descriptions of identities reflect a complex picture of some students’ understanding about the power dynamic and relationships with teachers in Hong Kong HE context. This study responds to the call for cross-cultural understandings of SaP in the global context (Green, 2019a). It provides some insights about university students’ understandings about their identity and pedagogical relationships with teachers in a hybridised HE context. Several implications for practices and research about SaP. Understanding SaP in a global context should pay attention to uniqueness of cultural influence on students’ understandings about their roles in pedagogical practices. In the Hong Kong context, while many universities have officially encouraged SaP-based practices in teaching and learning, it is still essential to let students and teachers understand the meaning of SaP and guide them how to practice partnerships in teaching and learning. In doing so, future research should adopt a critical cultural lens to examine the meaning of ‘partnership’ in different contexts, which may identify more possibilities of pedagogical praxis from a global perspective.

Conclusion

This study explored the ways that university students describe and understand their pedagogical relationships with teachers as we sought to investigate SaP in Hong Kong. Findings illustrated a series of features from the perspective of identity changes and power dynamic shifts in teaching and learning. This exploratory study could provide several significant contributions to the ongoing scholarly discussion about SaP in the global HE context. On the one hand, it illustrates students’ views towards SaP in the Hong Kong context, which is an internationlised Chinese society with both ‘westernised’, ‘neoliberalised’, and ‘marketised’ features in the HE sector. Such a sociocultural and educational context potentially shaped students’ complex views towards their identities in teaching and learning practices. Such findings may add novel insights into the existing studies about SaP in the global context.

On the other hand, this study extends the context-dependent nature of SaP to explicitly situated SaP research in a broader cultural sense (Healey & Healey, 2018). First, the unique cultural features in the Hong Kong context calls for further consideration about the potential imbrications of students’ hybridised understanding towards SaP in Hong Kong and for the international community. Second, the conceptualisations that emerged about learner-teacher relationships and SaP in this study push context-dependent nature of SaP further than that of Healey and Healey (2018). More than SaP being context-dependent, the conceptualisation of SaP itself has to be dynamic as understandings of such ideas and practices will be shaped by the cultural context. For that reason, we adopted a relational learner-teacher identity lens for SaP to capture where and how taken-for-granted learner-teacher roles and power dynamics were being disrupted or reformulated in the direction of a partnership. In doing so, the concept of ‘pedagogical in-betweeners’ emerged, which offers further opportunities for future research.

This study also has limitations as it only explored a small number of postgraduate students in one university, which cannot generalise the situation in Hong Kong or other contexts. Future study may also investigate academics’ views towards SaP and related practices, which will provide the other side of stories to help researchers and practitioners to understand SaP in the Hong Kong context. Meanwhile, as different forms of partnerships were investigated from the experience shared by student participants in this study, the underlying pedagogical motivations need further detailed discussion in future empirical research. This research sheds light on the ongoing exploration about student-staff pedagogical partnerships in the global higher education sector. The finding from the Hong Kong context may provide novel insights into the current literature that is mainly based on research in the western context. Scholars from other contexts may gain some new understandings about SaP in the Asian context.