Creating “transdisciplinary spaces” for a real-world scenario: A practical teaching collaboration

Abstract

A lack of transfer of academic literacy competencies was identified by academic literacy and Statistics lecturers involved in an extended  programme course. This paper reports on one attempt at a workable collaborative solution to this challenge. The collaborative attempt is situated within the academic literacies framework, and is described. Thereafter, student feedback as well as critical self-reflections from participating lecturers are qualitatively analysed in an interpretative framework, to determine how key stakeholders experienced the collaborative intervention. The collaborative attempt was found to be valuable in more effectively achieving the outcomes of both courses, and in helping students see the relevance of academic literacy in content subjects – this is in line with an academic literacies framework
which holds that academic literacy cannot be divorced from the contexts in which it is practiced. The primary factors that led to a successful collaboration were a willingness of all partners to participate in the project and regular communication between collaborators.
Main problems encountered revolved around miscommunication between lecturers and students, and an insufficiently detailed timetable that resulted in pressure at certain stages.

Keywords: Teaching collaboration, academic literacy, academic writing, English for specific purposes, project work