How can student partnerships stimulate organisational learning in higher education institutions?

Across higher education, increasing regulation and a focus on student satisfaction and experience have stimulated a proliferation of student engagement activities aimed at driving positive change. Nevertheless, we are not seeing the transformative changes we seek. We position this as a dual problem of focus and organisational learning. In examining focus, we draw on two-factor theory as a lens through which to interrogate and prioritise the many actionable findings that can result from student engagement practice. We further demonstrate the power of action research approach to student engagement in driving double-loop learning in educators – a deeper, more transformative, mechanism for organisational learning. This work contributes to an area of student engagement that is considered by many to be under-theorised – the lack of clear understanding and agreement as to the processes and conditions under which student engagement can achieve the transformative effect we pursue.