Student engagement has become an increasing focus for higher music education (HME) in recent times as institutions concentrate on preparing graduates for life beyond their programs. Cultivating effective learning and engagement for first-year Bachelor of Music students is often challenging, as these students predominantly undervalue and deprioritise their academic music courses in favour of practising their craft. ‘Students as Partners’ (SaP) is an emerging field in higher education that may address this challenge due to its potential to foster transferrable skills associated with increased engagement and employability. As an emerging field, there is a paucity of research in this area within HME. This paper responds to the need for further discussions around its potential as a pedagogical approach within this context.

Through a discussion of SAP’s key features and student engagement, it becomes clear that an educator’s role extends beyond assessment and lesson planning to also fostering the attitudes and mind-sets that underpin student learning, such as motivation and conceptions of learning. This approach recognises and respects students as experts in themselves, and values and prioritises authenticity, empowerment and rapport. From this position, it is argued that educators can invite students into partnership, forming effective collaborations to shape engaging learning activities, choose relevant course materials and topics, and design interesting assessment items with students, rather than for students.

This paper outlines a plan to implement SaP pedagogical approaches within one Australian institution’s compulsory first year academic music course, Exploring Music. Exploring Music brings together first year students from different disciplines and involves an exploration of a diverse range of music from different styles, periods and cultures. Typically, student engagement in this course has been low as they struggle to find immediate relevance of the course to their goals. Incorporating insights into SaP explored herein, this paper conceptualises how SaP has the potential to strengthen four key areas of effective learning: communicating values and purpose; understanding self; developing learning activities and content; and designing effective assessment items. This plan forms the basis of a research project that investigates Exploring Music students’ perceptions of, and experiences with the SaP approaches taken, while also exploring their implementation from a practitioner-based perspective.