A Reflection on Interdisciplinary Team-teaching in a Residential College

Abstract

Team-teaching is increasingly used in interdisciplinary university programmes to create unique learning environments that expose students to multiple perspectives. This approach encourages instructors to collaborate in areas like module design, lesson delivery and feedback. In the College of Alice and Peter Tan (CAPT) at the National University of Singapore (NUS), we offered an interdisciplinary class as part of the informal learning curriculum, called Reading Groups. This paper documents our personal reflections on team[1]teaching of this class and we supplement it with our students’ reflection to enrich the discussion. We found that this programme provided a good test bed for new pedagogical approaches and teaching partnerships, and promoted effective student learning across disciplines. The scaffolding of our lessons and openness to learn alongside our students demonstrated how team-teaching can deepen our students’ learning. We recommend that educators who are new to team-teaching consistently discuss and evaluate their pedagogical expectations, as this helps the instructors to adapt and integrate new teaching approaches into their practice.