DESCRIPTORS *Collegiality; *Cooperation; Elementary Secondary Education; Higher Education; Interpersonal Relationship; Interprofessional Relationship; Personal Narratives; *Writing Across the Curriculum

Given the benefits associated with collaboration, the question arises how to enhance collaborative efforts. Some of the forces that enable collaborative efforts are explored in this paper. The paper presents Frederick Erickson's framework of viewing contexts in three semipermeable levels (macrolevel, institutional level, and personal level) in an effort to explicate the kinds of forces that foster such efforts. Erickson proposed that educators and educational researchers take an anthropological look at school contexts when trying to understand school phenomena. To test this proposal, an anthropological view of a successful collaboration is offered. The collaboration was between the Writing Across the Curriculum Director and an instructor in the teacher-education department of a state college. The text focuses on the institutional level and the support offered by the college but emphasizes that the project's success was attributable to the compatibility between the two persons involved. This compatibility include