Planning to practice: Developing partnership-building skills across the curriculum

The ability to work in effective collaborations has long been a foundation of health promotion and environmental health practice and, more recently, has been explicitly identified in international accreditation competencies. While limited evidence is available on strategies to teach these skills within single courses, there are no guidelines on best practice, or how to develop the skills across a curriculum. In this article, we demonstrate the scaffolding of partnership building knowledge and skills across an undergraduate public health curriculum through the application of the cognitive apprenticeship model. Using a fading concept, students move from staff-directed to independent practitioners in the development and demonstration of partnership building skills. The model offers an example of cross-program scaffolding for skills that could be adapted to other competencies, disciplines, and contexts.