Pedagogical and Content Expertise in Team-Based Learning: Re-aligning Two Teaching Perspectives in an Undergraduate Medical School

Abstract

The Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine), an undergraduate medical school in Singapore formed from a partnership between Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) and Imperial College London (United Kingdom), has been using Team-Based Learning (TBL) as one of its main teaching strategies successfully for large student classes of up to 150 since its inception in 2014. Each TBL session is led by an interdisciplinary faculty teaching team, which consists of at least one ‘Content Expert’, who would have led the development of curriculum for the particular session and who hence would have subject matter expertise, and a ‘TBL Facilitator’, who manages productive student discussions during TBL sessions and provides pedagogical expertise before and during the educational sessions. This chapter discusses and compares the perspectives of content and process experts from the lens of the well-validated Teaching Perspectives Inventory. Using interview data and quotes from both parties, this chapter will illustrate areas of convergence and tension. In doing so, we provide a framework to enhance the teaching of science and its professional application in a large, interactive and collaborative classroom.