Cross boundary work seeks to address complex problems working across the boundaries of a profession and an organisation. Such work is rich in learning and opportunities for driving innovation. This kind of work fosters professionals’ need to be able to label their own expertise; recognise, draw on and contribute to expertise beyond their own profession, demonstrating a strong sense of their own professional identity whose actions can make a difference in the world. In this course, learners will take a hard look at common and personally held assumptions about innovation and change and what it means for learning. 

They will be introduced to socio-cultural perspectives such as relational agency, cultural historical activity theory and socio-material theoretical stances that pose deeper, wider questions about learning, innovation and change. Theoretical framing of an ecosystem approach will be employed to interpret the complex relations and interactions in the ecosystems they are a part of. Through using inquiry processes they will become knowledgeable about the strategic role and the workings of selected ecosystems relevant to their organisation, and examine instances of learning in cross boundary work that builds expertise and/or limits transformation of practice.

Leadership is a contextualised practice, and is exercised by different members of cross boundary groups, and at different levels. As a social influencing process, leadership is an important aspect of cross boundary work, influencing how relations are shaped. Understanding how boundaries are expressed is important in developing leadership capabilities in order to encourage the building of knowledge, expertise, resources and agency across boundaries. 

Awareness of your leadership stance is required to develop relational agency, shared intent and language, manage convergence or enrichment of points of view, differing ideological and practice stances and their different ways of and tools for working towards a common purpose. In this course students will develop a reflective stance on their leadership capabilities, in relation to supporting expansive learning, critically examine leadership in action through case studies (provided and students’ own), and in the process, deepen their inquiry capabilities for innovation and change.

In this course, learners will design a cross boundary change intervention. They will dive deep into the issue or problem they wish to focus on and design a change intervention based on an analysis of empirical data that they collect. This process requires the application of learners’ leadership capabilities to build trust and knowledge flow. 

Learners will analyse the data, working with their selected conceptual frameworks, and interpret the data in relation to trends relevant to their cross boundary issue. They will use this analysis as the basis for designing their change intervention. An evaluation plan will be an integral part of their proposal. Through the use of the dialogical inquiry process they will give and receive constant feedback from their peers, lecturer, mentor and other relevant stakeholders.