Based on an action research project implemented at two South African universities, we argue that content and language integration (ICL) collaborative partnerships benefit not only from collaboration between language and content specialists, but in addition, from collaboration between language specialists, general education specialists and content specialists from a variety of disciplines. However, as we illustrate below, these benefits may be accompanied by substantial challenges. We make a further claim, for the value of a transformative approach towards collaboration for content and language integration, in which the teacher/researchers engage in their practice in a critical and reflexive manner, and by so doing, foster their own deep learning, as well as the deep learning of the students.

This article focuses on the methodology for an academic literacies research project in an Integrated Content and Language (ICL) collaboration in economics and the ways in which the findings from the research contributed to further development and expansion of the ICL endeavour. The research was conducted independently rather than collaboratively and the paper reflects on the reasons for this. Experience from the project suggests the research methodologies and epistemologies in the two collaborating fields of economics and academic literacies lack congruence and points to the complexities of conducting collaborative research when research paradigms are so different.

This paper discusses an ongoing research-based collaboration between an academic literacies researcher and a lecturer in the field of Social Work aimed at exploring the nature of everyday writing in social work. The paper outlines the key principles of the methodology adopted—a text-oriented ethnography—and discusses the extent to which this methodology is facilitating a collaborative partnership towards meeting three interrelated goals: the empirical goal of building rich descriptions of writing in everyday social work practice; the ideological-epistemological goal of challenging a deficit discourse on writing (and writers); and the interventionist goal of working with institutions to harness writing in productive ways to learning and professional practice. Central to this methodological approach is an attempt to build a three-way conversation between the fields of 'new' literacy studies, in particular academic literacies; the discipline of social work education; and social work agencies/practitioners. We outline the methodology and foreground some key congruencies across these fields which are helping to facilitate successful collaboration.

In this paper I address the issue of collaboration between content lecturers and language lecturers or educational researchers. Whilst such collaboration is a desirable goal for disciplinary learning in monolingual settings, I suggest it takes on extra significance when two or more languages are involved in teaching and learning a discipline. Drawing on work in the area of scientific literacy, I make a case for the concept of disciplinary literacy as a useful vehicle for such collaboration, with the Carnegie Foundation's notion of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) being used as the overarching motivation. I argue that input from peers in other disciplines can help content lecturers, make informed decisions about the particular mix of communicative practices that are needed to develop disciplinary literacy in their courses. Clearly, this mix will be different from discipline to discipline and indeed vary within a discipline depending on the local linguistic environment and the nature of the course under discussion. As an aid to collaboration, I present a simple heuristic tool for initiating inter-faculty discussion—the Disciplinary Literacy Discussion Matrix. Using the matrix, content lecturers can discuss the disciplinary literacy goals of their teaching with other professionals, making their own decisions about the particular mix of communicative practices desired and the most appropriate methods for promoting these.

This study uses student reflections of previous success in academic writing to guide instructors as they design writing assignments. Seventy-one students in five classes responded to a questionnaire designed to help them identify particularly successful writing experiences and reflect on the circumstances, strategies, and methods they believed impacted their success. Student responses to these questions were analyzed to identify broad categories or themes. This process produced an "emic" or insider's view of what constitutes successful writing assignments and writing process. The findings suggest that students self report their writing as successful when the writing assignment engenders engagement, commitment, collaboration, a systematic approach, and opportunities for external confirmation. Instructors can include these considerations as they plan the writing assignments for their courses. Discovering what student writers believe constitutes good writing and what strategies most effectively help them produce high quality writing provides an opportunity to design writing assignments that empower students to join the conversation in their discourse community. If faculty are aware of student perceptions of writing assignments and use those perceptions in assignment design, the products may be more satisfying for both student writers and faculty readers.