Leadership education is included in higher education across disciplines. The role and expectations of leaders and leadership varies depending on context, despite the differences there are also major similarities when it comes to leadership education. There is value to explore how leadership education addresses contemporary societal challenges and life-long learning across disciplines, to better meet such challenges together.

To enhance the pedagogical quality of teaching leadership, we engaged in cross-disciplinary pedagogical discussions and shared learning from teaching leadership on master’s level (online) for mid-career professional master’s students in Business and Nursing respectively.

Both programs are Work-integrated learning (WIL) certified and thus include teaching and assignments connected to practice, where the students use their current workplace as practice context. As the students are mid-career professionals, they are also expected to share, jointly reflect and expand the integration of theory and practice based on their previous work experiences. In addition, both programs also share the intention of enhancing life-long learning through WIL.

The collaborative pedagogical exchange process was conducted in two leadership courses, one from each program. The process included being a guest visitor to the courses learning platform (Canvas), exploring each other’s course literature and jointly assessing how the set assignments engage students in leadership development in and for practice, in addition to learning leadership theories.

This project is ongoing with bi-weekly online meetings for three months. The intended outcome is course improvement and opportunities for sharing teaching materials and expanding opportunities for digital student interaction in each course with novel pedagogical tools and based on current research. As this is a pedagogical development project in process, the intention is to present the findings in the full paper.

Keywords: Leadership education, work-integrated learning, mid-career professionals.