Take5 #124 Small is beautiful: Emergent strategy, allyship and student partners

“We use our understanding then, to resist others’ assumptions: around deficits, deficiencies and barriers. We use it to not only impact the individual but also demand change from the institution.”

This #Take5 is brought to you from Jennie Blake, who is writing about student partnership, inclusive practice and making a big difference by keeping an eye on the small things. Jennie embraces change as a constant and ‘community’ as an astonishingly powerful force – and this blog looks at one aspect of what it means to work collectively and in partnership with students. As Jennie says, “There are no answers here, but hopefully these words will prompt further connections and reflections in our community.”

Seeding the small

Decades, by their very nature, invite a level of introspection and reflection, so having the chance to talk about what we have done at the University of Manchester with the learning development community here in this #Take5 is an amazing opportunity to think about where we started, what anchors us in the work we do – and the wind we try to use to lift our sails-to help us journey towards where we hope to end up. Talking through everything we have done, and all the things we’d love to do as a team would stretch even the most engaged person’s focus, so I thought I’d spend some time in this post to focus on one aspect of how we work together and what it means to “seed the small” via student partnership. 

I have had, for the majority of my time in higher education, the immense privilege and outright joy to work with the University of Manchester Library Student Team (which is and will always be “the Student Team” to me) – which is a collaborative innovation in itself. Last year was a big year for us. We celebrated our ten year anniversary and were awarded a CATE by AdvanceHE:

“The University of Manchester Library Student Team (UMLST), founded in 2013 alongside the opening of a new learning space on campus, has grown into an exemplary demonstration of the power of student-staff collaboration and a beacon of student support and advocacy. Over the past decade, UMLST has made a profound impact on individual students, the institution, and the wider community. They provide essential study support, ensure every student feels welcomed and included and challenge and enhance Library and wider-University pedagogies, practices and services. CATE, Advance HE, 2024”

Tell us about the CATE!

The CATE (Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence) is a teaching award that specifically recognises collaborative teams that have direct impact on teaching and learning at institutional and sector-wide levels – by virtue of that collaboration. It wasn’t enough to make an impact here, or to co-create with students, or consult them, to be awarded a CATE, we had to demonstrate long-term, impactful and deliberate collaboration with students.

The best place to learn about the work that led to the Student Team receiving this award is via the voices of two of the team! Bethany and Mariella are (as are all of the Student Team) absolutely amazing people, and they do a superlative job talking about what it means to them to work in collaboration with others in the Library and the wider University to make a difference to our students. You can find their joyous chat here: https://youtu.be/NkNUTfAjXrg?si=p_q8FrPJCiUwYCkx and the official write up from AdvanceHE is here University of Manchester Library Student Team | Advance HE. Above all, the CATE recognised that there is something unique and powerful about the way the Student Team creates and works as a community and within the communities at the University.

Partnership, power and the impact of each small step

In our reflections on our anniversary party and student partnership event (because of course we wrote them together), I wrote “Success in higher education is often awarded to the individual: the student with the highest mark, the academic with the biggest discovery. Partnership sometimes seems like something that has to be created in spite of the process, structure and culture of the sector.” ([Collaboration, Agency & Student Partnership: 10 Years of The University of Manchester Library Student Team | by Library Student Team | Medium](https://studentteam.medium.com/collaboration-agency-student-partnership-10-years-of-the-university-of-manchester-library-c96c3b339728 ) 

The Student Team is one way that the University of Manchester Library pushes back against that assumption and the idea that, in fact, success is defined by someone being at the “top”. At our core is a way of approaching work that is interdependent but not hierarchical and is closely linked to the work of the community organiser adrienne maree brown. For brown, emergent strategies are “ways for humans to practice complexity and grow the future through relatively simple interactions.” (https://adriennemareebrown.net/book/emergent-strategy/).

There are a number of key elements to this: 

• it is iterative (it acknowledges that change is part of life and any growth must grapple with change), 
• it is relational (it leans into the way interactions build community), and 
• it is inclusive of the multitudes of perspectives and approaches people bring to any work (it is no coincidence that brown talks about “strategies” instead of a single strategy). 

For brown, these strategies are closely linked to nature and echo the murmurations of starlings and the connections that vast forests create from seemingly individual elements. For the Student Team, this means we work in ways that connect but do not crowd, in ways that emphasise the power that is inherent from being part of a collective but still very much yourself. This approach also means that the Student Team works towards transformation (of ourselves, our institution, the sector) one step at a time, not as a rigidly choreographed unit, but as an interlocking collection of relationships that shifts depending on the work, the capacity of the community and the needs of everyone involved.

Say what? What does this mean for LD?

But what does this mean for learning development and our work with students? Essentially, it gives us a different way to approach our interactions with them, not as single meetings, sessions or support but as a web of interconnected communities that impact not only each individual but also form a deliberate, purposeful, network of connection and collective effort. This position means the story of our impact recognises the granular but celebrates the collective. We gather data; we evaluate what we do; we analyse what we can to understand where we are, but those results are ways for us to identify, and ensure we purposefully respond to, the changes and challenges that surround us. We use our understanding then, to resist others’ assumptions: around deficits, deficiencies and barriers. We use it to not only impact the individual but also demand change from the institution. Within learning development, a place of so much reflection and thinking, it is possible that when we wonder whether we made a difference, or, more likely, how to articulate the difference we made, we might turn to brown’s ideas, which would allow us to recognise how each of us, and every student, makes an impact and to present ourselves in a holistic way, as individuals, as a profession and as an area for research, reflection and growth.