Collaboration as pedagogy: consequences and implications for partnerships between communication and disciplinary specialists

Abstract

This paper explores the notion of ‘collaboration as pedagogy’ from a literacy-as-socialpractice approach, drawing on theorists who have applied social theories of learning to the development of literacies. These theorists speak to the need for interaction between communication and disciplinary specialists in an effort to locate the teaching of disciplinary literacies within disciplines. However, there is a gap in the literature as to how such interaction might happen and what the nature of it should be. This paper explores this gap by examining a case study where such interaction took place. The case study found that both communication and disciplinary specialists needed to re-examine their notions of pedagogy as they explored new collaborative ways of teaching disciplinary literacies. It was through the interaction of disciplinary and communication specialists that the explicit teaching of disciplinary literacies could be explored. This collaborative pedagogy required disciplinary specialists to work within their role as a disciplinary expert, while simultaneously having a critical overview of this ‘insider’ role, from outside of it. It was in engaging with communication/academic literacy lecturers, who were ‘outsiders’ to their disciplinary communities, that disciplinary specialists found themselves at the margins of their own fields, and were able to view themselves as insiders from the outside, as it were. This perspective appeared to enable the explicit teaching of disciplinary literacies.