BRiDGE Project - A "How To" guide on Interprofessional Working and Collaboration

Bringing together staff from civil society organisations, national and regional agencies, academic research and from policymaking in education is what we term ‘interprofessional’ working and collaboration. The starting point for the “BRiDGE” project, and this guide, is that encouraging an ‘interprofessional’ approach to education policy research lays the foundation for more effective and sustainable policy design, implementation and evaluation.

Written BY

BRiDGE project team

BRiDGE Project Team

September 1, 2025

Initial project surveys highlighted the concerns of researchers and practitioners that they lack opportunities within their work to develop essential competences in education policy implementation and development, as well as practical support to take an effective, co-ordinated approach. This guide draws on our experience of facilitating the “learning community”, acting as “boundary workers” to design and facilitate professional development opportunities over a period of two years for our participating experts. It is not a definitive “how to” of collaboration in education policy, but it intends to guide leaders of change though five domains of interprofessional work and highlight common tension points and critical questions.

Within each domain we explore challenges and opportunities as learned through our project community discussions and through the process of facilitating project events. These five domains make up an “interprofessional framework” that we propose as a complementary and combined perspective on the researcher and policymaking competence frameworks constructed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.

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You can download the guide "Interprofessional working: a guide to the challenges and opportunities in collaborating on evidence-informed education policy" here.