Working for Social Justice: A Review of Students as Leaders in Pedagogical Partner Programs

Melissa Scheve () and Malia Piper
Additional contact information
Melissa Scheve: Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA
Malia Piper: Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA

Social Sciences, 2025, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-13

Abstract: Students as Partners (SaP) programs have centered student voices since their inception. Student–faculty pedagogical partnerships are grounded in the notion that students have the expertise to contribute to faculty in preparing for, reflecting on, and revising teaching and learning practices in ways that are inclusive and responsive to all learners. This expertise is based in part on their lived experiences—both as students and as members of the student populations that SaP programs were intentionally created to help empower (e.g., first generation, low-income, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of Color) and others marginalized in higher education). These students, in dialogue with faculty, help to expose equity issues across classrooms. As SaP programs have proliferated in colleges and universities across the globe, the student partners’ role as social justice advocates in these programs have expanded too. This review explores the pedagogical partnership literature over the past 20 years, to establish the ways in which undergraduate students and post-bacs have flourished in leadership roles in SaP programs: (a) acting as leaders for social equity on campus, (b) serving as peer mentors to new student partners in existing programs, (c) co-creating new programs, and (d) publishing in the literature. This review reveals opportunities for new directions with peer mentorship in SaP programs through the role of lead student mentors who can help to scale up SaP programs, support the emotional labor involved in partnership work, and create pathways to future social justice leadership opportunities.

Keywords: peer mentorship; pedagogical partnership; leadership; social justice; students as partners (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/14/3/155/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/14/3/155/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:14:y:2025:i:3:p:155-:d:1604093

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().