The effect of teacher-student collaboration on academic innovation in universities: an exploration from the perspective of collaborative process

Purpose This paper aims to explore the effect of teacher–student collaboration on academic innovation in universities in different stages of collaboration. Design/methodology/approach Based on collaboration life cycle, this paper divided teacher–student collaboration into initial, growth and mature stages to explore how teacher–student collaboration affects academic innovation. Findings Collecting data from National Science Foundation of China, the empirical analysis found that collaboration increases the publication of local (Chinese) papers at all stages. However, teacher–student collaboration did not significantly improve the publication of international (English) papers in the initial stage. In the growth stage, teacher–student collaboration has a U-shaped effect on publishing English papers, while its relationship is positive in the mature stage. Practical implications The results offer suggestions for teachers and students to choose suitable partners and also provide some implications for improving academic innovation. Originality/value This paper constructed a model in which the effect of teacher–student collaboration on academic innovation in universities was established.