Changing and sustaining transdisciplinary practice through research partnerships

Transdisciplinary practice has been strongly advocated as an effective approach to working with children and families in early years’ settings. However, practitioners continue to experience barriers to changing practice, and difficulties challenging their professional identity. These personal-professional challenges can make transdisciplinarity difficult to sustain. Accordingly, in this chapter we suggest some possibilities for working with research partnerships as a means of changing and sustaining transdisciplinary practice. Our discussion is based upon case studies from two Australian early intervention sites, where practitioners from early childhood education, social work and allied health areas come together for the benefit of families and children. We discuss some of the benefits and drawbacks of working with case study methodologies, and the potential of action research methodologies for supporting the sustainability of transdisciplinary practice in early years’ settings.