Working With Interdisciplinary Teams Of Boundary Spanners: The Challenges And Potential For Adult Education

Abstract

Innovative research and development for holistic adult on-line health education (eHealth) is increasingly conducted by interdisciplinary teams of boundary spanners in grant-funded academic institutes. Typically, these teams include fields that represent the whole person with an illness in their social and technological context: medicine, nursing, social and counseling psychology, social work, systems engineering, and the communications and information sciences. However, adult education does not typically sit at these collaborative research tables. This paper uses a case example of a sole adult educator working in such a setting to explore how adult education fits into this new boundary-spanning field of practice and scholarship.