Transprofessional collaboration in higher education

At Södertörn University, Sweden, a transprofessional model has been developed aiming to support students’ writing development from the theory of academic literacies. In this innovative way of working, university librarians and writing teachers collaborate with university teachers to integrate a teaching element on academic writing (including searching for, appraising, reading, and writing texts) into existing university courses. In this article, we describe and discuss our experiences of implementing this transprofessional model in nursing education. We observe that collaboration made it possible for all professionals to share their knowledge, both in a theoretical and practical sense. Among other things, the university teachers appropriated several linguistic tools which they were able to use in their continued teaching of academic writing. However, challenges regarding the collegial sharing of knowledge were also experienced. If the lessons learned are to be implemented the organisation, both resources and a mandate from the management is essential.