Teaching and Curriculum Partnerships Program of Research

Partnership pedagogy, defined as a curriculum that is co-created with a range of internal and external partners, improves the employability of graduates by partnering of universities with industry, community, and other providers to deliver the capabilities that employers seek. It is now widely recognised that higher education must provide a sufficiently broad base of employment skills by aligning the expectations of students, employers, and academics. This means that students should be equipped not only with technical knowledge but also the soft (people) skills or technical skills needed for employment. Truly transformational partnerships benefit all stakeholders.

Image: Saulo Mohana,  Unsplash.com

Examples of collaborative relationships between universities and industry include initiatives such as science parks, incubators, continuing education, and patenting to commercialise research knowledge. An OECD report has found that countries with strong connections between education institutions and tend to be the most successful in ensuring successful transitions of students from school to work (Schoon & Mann, 2020, cited in Hurley et al., 2021).

Conventional approaches to partnerships present some problems, with academic staff expressing concern in relation to ‘their industry currency, allocated workload, lack of reward and recognition, and their capacity to enact an authentic curriculum’ (Ferns, Dawson & Howitt, 2019, p.109). This research seeks to address the above issues and study partnership pedagogy and work-integrated learning to prepare students for the rapidly changing workforce of the 21st century.

The TCP umbrella application

The TCP (Teaching and Curriculum Partnerships) Program of Research enables researchers at Western to utilise a streamlined process to Human Ethics approval, access to the significant quantity of institutional retention data that the University collects, and approval to publish this data.  This is done via approval for subprojects under the TCP Program of Research.

The research should be low risk and have the approval of the relevant School.

If you are interested in this research, or turning your internal evaluation of a partnerships pedagogy initiative or project into published research, please get in touch with the TCP Central Team.

The TCP Program of Research’s Human Research Ethics Approval (H15214) runs from 30 November 2022 until 30 November 2027. The institutional data collected in this period is also potentially accessible to researchers.

Teaching and Curriculum Partnerships Program of Research Current Projects

Click on the arrow below to see a description of the projects

School of Business
It's more than just internships, placements, and guest lecturers: Partnership pedagogy in practice (H15413)

This project seeks:

  • To evaluate the effectiveness of the partnership pedagogy approach with industry partners in sports management education, as evidenced by student feedback and engagement.
  • To examine the impact of co-designed content with industry partners on student learning outcomes in sports marketing.
  • To assess the effectiveness of the Pressbook as a learning tool in sports marketing education.
  • To explore the influence of the stadium tour on student learning outcomes and experience in sports marketing.
(Principal investigator: Jess Richards)

School of Nursing and Midwifery
Sustainability advocates: Co-designing a literacy workshop with international students as partners (H15575)

Aim: To explore students’ academic literacy needs to better support their engagement with studies and improve learning outcomes, course progression and retention.

  • What are the academic literacy issues experienced by international students at the start of a nursing degree?
  • Which academic literacy teaching strategies would best support the development of academic literacy competence for international students commencing nursing studies?
(Principal investigator: Christy Cabote)

The Finesse Project: Developing Sustainable Resources to teach de-escalation techniques to undergraduate and post graduate nurses (H15597)

We will be developing a sustainable resource that can be used across the undergraduate and postgraduate nursing education to enable students to communicate effectively with people in the health system who are distressed. This study will contribute to the improvement of teaching and learning of mental health practice in clinical practice classes. (Principal investigator: Annette Stunden)

The co-design and implementation of the Master of Midwifery program (H15650)

There is a need to build the capacity of registered midwives to support their transition to effective clinical capacity and leadership roles in healthcare. This study will use partnership pedagogy with a variety of stakeholders to identify the learning outcomes of the program and to inform the design and implementation of the Master of Midwifery. (Principal investigator: Hazel Keedle)

The STIntBook Study (H15664)

This study will contribute to research on the use of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) for students enrolled in University undergraduate nursing degrees. The STIntBook Study specifically aims to address the gap in research in this area by identifying the effectiveness of a tutorial based H5P interactive workbook in a second year applied pathophysiology and alterations in health subject for nursing students. (Principal investigators: Philippa Mann and Bronwyn Smith )