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ABSTRACT
University of Tampere
Faculty of Education
Erja Katajamäki: MULTIPROFESSIONALITY AND HOW TO LEARN IT
A Case Study at the University of Applied Sciences in the Field of
Social and Health Care
In this research the point of interest is multiprofessionality and how to learn it in the context
of a multi-field university of applied sciences in the field of social and health care. The purpose
of this research is to conceptualize multidisciplinarity and multiprofessionality as expertise
in social and health care and find ways of learning it. The objectives are to increase the
understanding of these phenomena and to find out factors in how to enhance learning in a
multiprofessional way. The research questions are: how do the students’ and teachers’ experiences
indicate multidisciplinarity and multiprofessionality and how do the students’ and
teachers’ experiences indicate the students’ learning of multiprofessionality. The theoretical
background lies on the theories of multidisciplinarity and multiprofessionality and also on
collaborative learning as professional growth.
The research approach is qualitative case study and the data has been analyzed using the content
analysis method. The case studied is a learning project, which lasted one academic year.
The main objective for the students was to learn multiprofessionality. The data consists of six
students’ learning diaries, six teachers’ theme interviews, meeting materials and written
project evaluations. Based on the analysis, there are 1,235 meaningful utterances from the
total of 1,516 utterances. The results have been outlined as categories, which indicate the different
dimensions of the phenomena in this research.
The findings show that multidisciplinarity is the basis for multiprofessionality. It takes the
form of administration, utilizing the sciences needed on the ground of the competence and of
concrete work as multiprofessionality. The nature of the main concepts is both personal and
communal. According to the results of the study, the question in multiprofessionality is in
different experts in different fields who work together towards a common goal, the wellbeing
of human beings’. Another result is that multidisciplinarity as a personal feature denotes the
competence that multiprofessionality assumes. This kind of competence is described as skills