Curriculum meeting points: a transcultural and transformative initiative in nursing education

Following the Bologna initiative in the 1990s, schools of nursing across Europe began considering ways in which they might collaborate with each other in educating nurses in advanced/post-bachelor programs. There were various levels of success which led the writers to explore if such collaboration was possible with similar programs in the United States. Spearheaded by the Institute of Nursing at the Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences (HiOA), a consortium was established in 2010 to explore the possibilities of international collaborations in this area. In the process, recognition of subtle and more obvious barriers to such collaborations emerged. Consortium members agreed that there was a need to explore the origins and effects of these barriers and the assumptions which seemed to underpin them. The identified barriers were often caused by assumptions about the content of educational programs and about individual and collective approaches to teaching and learning. Several participants experienced a shift in consciousness about nursing education following the consortium's initial meeting in Oslo. For some, there was a feeling of finding 'like-minded thinkers' and for others it was like viewing a new landscape. This article details the evolution of the consortium and the philosophic underpinnings which guide its continued deliberations.