FOO Maw Lin1 and MUN Lai Yoke2
1Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science (FOS)
2Department of Economics, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS)
1chmfml@nus.edu.sg; 2ecsmunl@nus.edu.sg
Foo, M. L., & Mun, L. Y. (2023). Implementation of team-teaching in an interdisciplinary course [Lightning talk]. In Higher Education Campus Conference (HECC) 2023, 7 December, National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecc2023proceedings/implementation-of-team-teaching-in-an-interdisciplinary-course/
SUB-THEME
Interdisciplinarity and Education
KEYWORDS
Interdisciplinary courses, pedagogy, co-teaching, team-teaching
CATEGORY
Paper Presentations
INTRODUCTION
Interdisciplinary courses (IDC) are part of the core basket of courses that all students in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHS) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) are required to read. Interdisciplinary courses are typically thematic-based and team-taught by staff from both Faculty of Science (FOS) and Faculty of Arts and Social Science (FASS) for diverse disciplinary perspectives. In this abstract, the authors from the Department of Chemistry and Department of Economics will describe why and how a particular mode of team teaching (multi-modal) was employed in their IDC: HS2904 “Driving towards the Future: Battery Electric Vehicles” in Semester 1, AY 2022/23 to maximise interdisciplinary learning in students. HS2904 is a course about battery electric vehicles (BEVs) from both technology (chemistry-focused) and social sciences (economics-focused) perspectives.
According to the framework by Cruz and Geist (2019), there are four modes of teaching and learning integration for team-teaching: (1) co-teaching, (2) alternative, (3) blended, and (4) true team teaching, with an implicit hierarchy. They defined these four modes as follows, with increasing degree of integration:
…co-teaching, in which instructors have responsibility for largely independent sections of the same course; alternative teaching, in which instructors take turns providing instruction, requiring further coordination; blended teaching; in which instructors share elements of the pedagogical design of the course; requiring collaboration; and finally, true team teaching in which all aspects of the course are shared; requiring full integration of all aspects of the course.
While this framework helps to clarify the different modes of team-teaching, what is the best mode for HS2904? We find that a multi-modal approach is best suited since there are no disciplinary prerequisites for enrolment. Furthermore, being an interdisciplinary course1, linkages between the disciplines can be made salient by applying a multimodal approach. This approach entailed using different modes of the team-teaching framework at different times during the semester to adapt to the progression of the students’ interdisciplinary understanding of the Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) ecosystem. The multi-modal approach corroborates with Nikitina’s (2006) three strategies for interdisciplinary learning: contextualising, conceptualising and problem-centring.
Table 1 shows the various modes of team-teaching (Cruz & Geist, 2019) used for the main chapters of HS2904 along with accompanying strategy (Nikitina, 2006) and rationale. The reason(s) for choosing a particular mode will be elaborated in our talk.
Table 1
The various modes of team-teaching employed in HS2904
| Item | Content | Mode of team-teaching | Strategy: Rationale |
| Chapter 1 (Introduction) |
Electrification of urban transport | Alternative | Problem-centring & Contextualising: overarching theme of module |
| Chapter 2,3 | Economics, Chemistry | Co-teaching | Conceptualising: bringing students up to required disciplinary background |
| Chapter 4 | Supply chain in EVs | Blended | Conceptualising: highlighting the interlinks between technology and economy |
| Chapter 10 (Conclusion) |
Closing remarks | Alternative and Blended | Contextualising & Problem-centring: exploring possibilities for further development beyond current context |
| Group Project | Integration | True team teaching | Problem-centring: solving a problem or raising new questions with an interdisciplinary perspective |
Akin to the working world where multidisciplinary teams collaborate and solve problems, good team teaching is important for an interdisciplinary course to succeed. Subsequent iterations of this course will build off this work as we work towards a more seamlessly integrated IDC.
ENDNOTE
- Jacobs (2010) defines an interdisciplinary approach as “a knowledge view and curriculum approach that consciously applies methodology and language from more than one discipline to examine a central theme, issue, problem, topic, or experience. In contrast to a discipline-field based view of knowledge, inter-disciplinarity does not stress delineations but linkages.”
REFERENCES
Cruz, L., & Geist, M. J. (2019). A team-teaching matrix: Asking new questions about how we teach together. Transformative Dialogues: Teaching & Learning Journal, 12(1). https://kpu.ca/sites/default/files/Transformative%20Dialogues/TD.12.1_Cruz&Geist_Team_Teaching_Matrix.pdf
Jacobs, H. H. (2010). Curriculum 21: Essential education for a changing world. ASCD.
Nikitina, S. (2006). Three strategies for interdisciplinary teaching: contextualizing, conceptualizing, and problem‐centring. Journal of curriculum studies, 38(3), 251-71. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220270500422632
