Partnership in higher education has gained prominence over recent decades, but recent studies have identified a lack of research exploring how partnership practices unfold in specific disciplinary contexts. This article explores how a transdisciplinary approach can be used to better understand and facilitate student–staff partnerships where staff and students have diverse disciplinary backgrounds and knowledge. We present a case study of the Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation at the University of Technology Sydney, focusing on the adaptation of our curriculum co-creation processes by drawing on multiple knowledge types through a reflexive process of mutual learning. We conclude that explicit consideration of these principles, which are common to both transdisciplinary and partnership frameworks, have the potential to enhance consideration of diverse perspectives and the roles played by worldviews, norms and values when building student–staff partnerships around curriculum co-creation.

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This article explores how transformative higher education approaches can be fostered through an integration of the concepts of third space, Students as Partners (SaP), and transdisciplinarity in practical contexts. We describe a collaborative enquiry that engaged staff and students in a reflexive dialogue centred on the concepts of mutual learning, liminality, emergence, and creativity as enacted in the curriculum of a transdisciplinary undergraduate degree, the Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation (BCII) at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia. The key insights that emerged through this enquiry were: third spaces in curriculum can be enabled but not constructed, all parties need to embrace uncertainty and a mutual learning mindset, and that “stepping in and out” of such fluid liminal spaces can stimulate creativity. Based on our experience and exploration, we offer some practical recommendations to those seeking to create similar enabling conditions for third spaces in their own undergraduate programs.@en