Abstract/Summary

Partnership working has become part of the culture within the School of Law at the University of Reading, with successful partnership projects building upon each other, encouraging students to see themselves in the partnerships, and raising students’ voices (Millmore, 2021). This case study shares our experiences of a partnership which was less overtly successful than we hoped; whilst there were positives for the student partners, the aims of the partnership were not achieved, despite attempts to pivot and reinvent ourselves, leading to a need to review what is meant by “success” in partnership working. What are the metrics for success in student-staff partnerships? Do we measure the concept of success purely in relation to a tangible outcome or in doing so are we missing the impact on student and staff partners’ development? The authors propose that identifying success purely as an outcome misses the value of those incidental successes which are intrinsic to the process of partnership working, and their impact should bear equal value and not be disregarded.