Abstract

The language of partnership has emerged as a reaction against neo-liberal visions of HE as a marketplace with student customers and HE providers. Partnership is presented as the culmination and highest form of student engagement with even the Quality Assurance Agency defining it as shared working ‘based on the values of: openness; trust and honesty; agreed shared goals and values; and regular communication between the partners’. So is the echo of Freire in the pedagogies of partnership intentional? This paper will explore the potential offered by the pedagogies of partnership to engage UK HE with the ideas and ideals of Paulo Freire but will also warn of the perils of domestication into ‘marketized’ HE practices.