This paper explores the notion and practice of collaboration as it occurred in a CUTSD (Committee for University Teaching and Staff Development) funded project called TULIP (Tertiary Undergraduate Literacy Integration Program). A particular feature of the Project involved us in working collaboratively with lecturers from different disciplines and different tertiary institutions around the issue of first year student literacy. One of the insights from the Project is that the notion and practice of collaboration is problematic. Collaboration, we found, needs to be flexible, critical, and practical - central to the processes of changing the social and discursive practices and understandings of participating teachers. But it is this very centrality, we believe, that problematises what is generally understood by the term ‘collaboration’. We find it useful to think of collaboration as a process of involvement in social meaning-practice and interactions that are relational and hybrid. When we collaboratively discussed our actions and judgements, along with our nagging doubts and glimmers of insights, the conversation gradually became more inclusive. We developed a process of flexible collaboration that enabled us to articulate divergent practices and that confronted multiple realities in education. In doing so, we were led to examine the social functions and effects of the meanings we made; the politics of our texts.