Students as (Intergenerational) Partners: Considering Time in the 4M Framework
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.14.2Keywords:
students as partners, post-secondary education, intergenerational education, 4M Framework, chronosystemsAbstract
Relationships in the students as partners (SaP) movement in higher education have been described as intergenerational, because students, staff, and faculty of various ages work collaboratively on assessing teaching and learning practices, co-designing curriculum, and conducting educational research. However, few studies have investigated age relations in the SaP movement. Drawing on the concept of the chronosystem, which brings attention to various definitions of time, we performed an analysis of three critical and interpretive qualitative studies to better understand intergenerational age relations in higher education, generally, and in the SaP movement, specifically. These three studies related to the scholarships of teaching and learning (SoTL) and the SaP movement and included a total of 26 individuals (eight students, four staff, and 14 faculty). We organized our findings into four themes. Theme one, “intergenerational ecosystems,” captures the age diversity of different educational environments. Theme two, “individual and institutional changes of time,” discusses how social change and changing academic cultures impact individual relationships. Theme three, “academia as a gerontocracy,” describes the perception of older faculty/staff as holding more power in higher education. Theme four, “age, intersectionality, and belonging,” examines intersectional ageism within post-secondary education. We discuss these findings in relation to the 4M Framework, which connects micro-meso-macro-mega levels of influence. We propose that the addition of the chronosystem to the 4M Framework may facilitate enhanced understanding of the meanings of age and aging in the SaP movements and post-secondary education.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Kelsey Harvey; Katherine R. Cooper; Stephanie Hatzifilalithis, Elisa Do, Julia Cerminara, Jacob Krone
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