Interdisciplinary Team Teaching Research Articles

Effectiveness of interdisciplinary teacher teams among English teachers in public secondary schools in Jolo

This descriptive-comparative study assessed the effectiveness of interdisciplinary teacher teams among English teachers in public secondary schools in Jolo during school year 2023-2024. One hundred (n=100) samples were taken through non-probability sampling method, quota sampling, among selected public secondary schools in Jolo, Sulu, Philippines. A modified questionnaire was used to elicit the perceptions of English teachers regarding the effectiveness of implementing interdisciplinary teacher teams in public secondary schools. English teachers believed that the interdisciplinary teacher teams among secondary schools was very effective in Instructional Practices, Student Orientation, Team Organization, and Team Structures. Findings also noted significant difference on the perceptions of English teachers regarding the effectiveness of interdisciplinary teacher teams in Team Organization. The study highlighted the positive impact of interdisciplinary approaches on student engagement and achievement. Interdisciplinary teacher teams offered opportunities for professional growth and development. Educators had the opportunity to expand their knowledge base, develop their teaching practices, and gain insights into alternative instructional approaches through collaboration with colleagues from different disciplines. Educational institutions can support this professional development by providing resources, incentives, and recognition for interdisciplinary collaboration.

Interdisciplinary Team Teaching

Interdisciplinary Team Teaching

Online Learning in China within the Internet+ Landscape: A Comprehensive Study

This study investigates the evolving landscape of distance education on the Internet+ environment, focusing on its effectiveness and the factors influencing it. Through a mixed research approach, incorporating both quantitative and qualitative analyses, insights were gathered via interviews with students and administrators in the distance learning sector. Findings reveal that students primarily pursue distance education to meet practical career and skill acquisition objectives, while also gaining metacognitive benefits. Nevertheless, limited subjective communication with teachers is a significant concern. Administrators emphasize interdisciplinary teaching teams and resource-sharing platforms. Recommendations include enhancing communication channels, leveraging metacognitive development, facilitating teacher collaboration, conducting comprehensive technical support and evaluation assessments, establishing specialized resource-sharing platforms, supporting professional development, and implementing formative assessment strategies to adapt to evolving educational needs. These recommendations aim to ensure that distance education remains relevant, effective, and student-centered in the dynamic Internet+ environment.

Exploring Interdisciplinary Team Teaching as a Pedagogical Strategy for Developing ESP Teachers’ Subject Matter Knowledge

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has rapidly gained considerable importance due to the position of English as a lingua franca in various scientific and economic domains. This paper aims to highlight ESP practitioners' attitudes towards implementing interdisciplinary team teaching and the potential barriers that hinder its implementation in the business school at Ibn Tofail University. To achieve these objectives, a qualitative research design was adopted, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with five ESP practitioners in the business school. The study reveals that the five interviewed teachers have positive attitudes towards interdisciplinary team teaching in the business school. However, the five interviewed ESP practitioners have been reluctant to implement co-teaching, which is the highest level of collaboration and interaction between ESP practitioners and content teachers, due to personal, pedagogical, and administrative constraints.

Construction and Application of An Interdisciplinary Team Teaching Model for Foreign-Related Nursing English in Higher Vocational Colleges from the Perspective of Ecolinguistics

Under the background of globalization, there are severe challenges in the cultivation of the professional skills of nursing staff, especially the English skills of foreign-related nursing, which has become an important part of the training of nursing talents. At present, most English teaching of foreign-related nursing in higher vocational colleges follows the traditional grammar teaching model. However, as most of the teaching staff for medical English are English teachers who have limited nursing professional knowledge, the industry characteristics of medical English are not fully demonstrated in the teaching process, and the lack of practicality inevitably reduces the quality of medical English teaching. Therefore, the traditional nursing English teaching model in higher vocational colleges can no longer meet the actual teaching needs. There is an urgent need to implement an interdisciplinary team teaching model that completely fits the industry environment of foreign-related nursing English and apply it flexibly to improve the quality of foreign-related nursing English teaching in higher vocational colleges, and lay a solid foundation for professional practice of nursing staff. Based on the perspective of ecolinguistics, this article explores the application strategies of the interdisciplinary team teaching model for foreign-related nursing English in higher vocational colleges, with the view to provide guidelines for the actual teaching of foreign-related nursing English.

Creating a Learning Model Where Students Practice the Scientific Process Through Protein Modeling

Based on the CREST (Connecting Researchers, Educators, and STudents) model undergraduate students at Nova Southeastern University (NSU) cooperated in teams through a specially designed Honors Seminar Course titled, “Introduction to Protein Modeling”. This Course‐based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) brought together groups of undergraduate students early in their studies to have authentic research and presentation experiences. This course was open to all students in NSU’s Farquhar Honors College regardless of their major, academic level or previous college level experience with science or protein modeling. Out of 15 registered students, seven of them were first semester freshmen, one was a sophomore, three were juniors, and four were seniors. Most of the students were Biology or Behavioral Neuroscience Majors. However, there was one of each of the following four majors: Dance, Exercise and Sport Science, Marine Biology, and Pre‐Nursing. The students were divided into five groups of three, each consisting of a mix of freshmen and upper‐level students. Here we present the design and results of a course that provided students with early access to a course‐based research experience using various protein bioinformatics tools (Jmol, Pymol, Autodoc Vina, and the Protein Data Bank). Students were shown previously completed projects as part of the CREST Program available on the Program’s website: https://cbm.msoe.edu/crest/new9_2021.php. To support CURE sustainability, we used an interdisciplinary team‐teaching approach, with distributed leadership and the support of the University’s Honors College in the development of this course. Students worked collaboratively during class meetings to identify a protein molecular story that they wanted to research and describe using molecular modeling tools, including the development of a 3‐D model. At the midterm, the student groups shared their progress and received feedback from the faculty and their peers. Students continued to revise their modeling projects and received additional feedback one month later. At the end of the semester each team presented their final projects with components that included a protein model description sheet, poster, and oral presentations. Student projects included molecular stories related to MMP 12, cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator, marine bacterial laminarinase, sickle cell anemia, and iron acquisition in E. coli related to TonB/TonBox binding. Through interacting with the primary literature, course materials, and using protein modeling tools, students gained an introduction to the scientific process and applied it to better understand molecular mechanisms. During this process, students also learned to explain these processes to themselves and others through constructing presentations and model descriptions. Student learning gains were documented by using the RISC (Research on the Integrated Science Curriculum) Survey.

Practical tips for teaching ethics and humanism to medical students

This article presents the results of a decade’s experiment in creating a longitudinal ethics and humanism curriculum for the core clinical year at UNC School of Medicine, North Carolina, United States. This curriculum applies published research on best practices in medical ethics education. Sample comments from course evaluations of the students who have completed this curriculum provide support for its success at achieving its desired learning outcomes. To create a similar ethics curriculum in the core clinical year at other medical schools, there are twelve practical tips: preparation: read the research on the ethical challenges for medical students; recruit an interdisciplinary teaching team; create cohorts for this aspect of the curriculum that will stay together for the year; grade only with pass/fail; have the students bring the cases from their clinical experiences; feed them if possible, and structure the time together carefully. Use a narrative ethics methodology and introduce alternative methods for student writing and group process. Connect students with literature in medical humanities and bioethics and encourage publication of their narratives. As with any good creation, the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and each campus can adapt these guidelines for their people and programs.

Practical tips for teaching ethics and humanism to medical students.

This article presents the results of a decade's experiment in creating a longitudinal ethics and humanism curriculum for the core clinical year at UNC School of Medicine, North Carolina, United States. This curriculum applies published research on best practices in medical ethics education. Sample comments from course evaluations of the students who have completed this curriculum provide support for its success at achieving its desired learning outcomes. To create a similar ethics curriculum in the core clinical year at other medical schools, there are twelve practical tips: preparation: read the research on the ethical challenges for medical students; recruit an interdisciplinary teaching team; create cohorts for this aspect of the curriculum that will stay together for the year; grade only with pass/fail; have the students bring the cases from their clinical experiences; feed them if possible, and structure the time together carefully. Use a narrative ethics methodology and introduce alternative methods for student writing and group process. Connect students with literature in medical humanities and bioethics and encourage publication of their narratives. As with any good creation, the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and each campus can adapt these guidelines for their people and programs.

Effect of Interdisciplinary Team Teaching on Postgraduate Students’ Beliefs and Confidence in Academic Writing

Writing confidence and beliefs are commonly viewed as important motivational factors to influence writers’ performance. Closely correlated to writing motivation, Interdisciplinary Team Teaching (ITT) has been proposed as a pedagogical means to support postgraduates who face challenges in international writing and publishing. Based on investigations of 22 postgraduates attending a writing course named “Mastering Writing for Presentation and Publication” (MWPP), this study gained new insights into how ITT affected students’ writing beliefs and confidence. Through a comparison between the subjects of MWPP and participants from a one-teacher writing course, our study reported a horizontal level of writing beliefs in two groups and higher writing and course confidence from MWPP participants. The pre/post-tests within the MWPP course showed significant improvements in students’ confidence. In addition, the qualitative dataset revealed that ITT intervention significantly benefited students’ writing motivation. Overall, our study showed that the ITT-supported MWPP course has produced positive influences on the formation and development of ESL postgraduates’ writing beliefs and boosted their writing confidence.

Making Arrangements: The Curation of Grief in the Home Studio (Faire les arrangements : la conservation du deuil dans le studio à domicile)

This is an article co-produced by the contributions of two authors from different professional disciplines—art psychotherapy and ceramics at Ulster University, Belfast School of Art (Northern Ireland). The purpose of this collaboration is to promote the attributes of material culture (materials of life that are meaningful and fulfill our needs) as a signature pedagogical practice within art therapy. Material culture contributes to art therapy in its appreciation of possessions as personal archaeology representing a life story, ancestral legacy, and an autobiographical archive. The influence of material culture upon art therapy training at Ulster University is transformative, in terms of interdisciplinary team teaching and creating with personal belongings. An appreciation of each person’s material culture supports relevancy within art therapy practice by encouraging service users (participants) to embrace their worldly goods as psychological and artistic possessions. In this acknowledgement of material culture, the art therapist is not the authority in terms of what materials to provide, but rather supports the use of home as studio and gallery. The following is an example of material culture’s contributions to art therapy teaching in relation to loss and commemoration.

A systematic scoping review of undergraduate medical ethics education programs from 1990 to 2020

Introduction Ensuring medical students are equipped with essential knowledge and portable skills to face complex ethical issues underlines the need for ethics education in medical school. Yet such training remains variable amidst evolving contextual, sociocultural, legal and financial considerations that inform training across different healthcare systems. This review aims to map how undergraduate medical schools teach and assess ethics. Methods Guided by the Systematic Evidence-Based Approach (SEBA), two concurrent systematic scoping reviews were carried out, one on ethics teaching and another on their assessment. Searches were conducted on PubMed, Embase, PsycINFO and ERIC between 1 January 1990 and 31 December 2020. Data was independently analysed using thematic and content analysis. Results Upon scrutinising the two sets of full-text articles, we identified 141 articles on ethics teaching and 102 articles on their assessments. 83 overlapped resulting in 160 distinct articles. Similar themes and categories were identified, these include teaching modalities, curriculum content, enablers and barriers to teaching, assessment methods, and their pros and cons. Conclusion This review reveals the importance of adopting an interactive, multimodal and interdisciplinary team-teaching approach to ethics education, involving community resource partners and faculty trained in ethics, law, communication, professionalism, and other intertwining healthcare professions. Conscientious effort should also be put into vertically and horizontally integrating ethics into formal medical curricula to ensure contextualisation and application of ethics knowledge, skills and attitudes, as well as protected time and adequate resources. A stage-based multimodal assessment approach should be used to appropriately evaluate knowledge acquisition, application and reflection across various practice settings. To scaffold personalised development plans and remediation efforts, multisource evaluations may be stored in a centralised portfolio. Whilst standardisation of curricula content ensures cross-speciality ethical proficiency, deliberative curriculum inquiry performed by faculty members using a Delphi approach may help to facilitate the narrowing of relevant topics.

Interdisciplinary Team Teaching: Reflections on Praxis and Pedagogy in an Undergraduate Classroom

Much scholarship available on team-teaching focuses on K-12 programming, with limited examples in post-secondary education. Adding to the growing research on college-level team-taught courses, this reflection describes how interdisciplinary team-teaching can offer not only a pedagogically innovative experience for students but also highlight the strengths of the faculty in their teaching and research areas. In addition to reviewing the differences between interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary curricula, we reflect on our experience delivering Globalization as a team-taught course, designing learning outcomes and course material, and negotiating classroom strategies, highlighting successful components and considering future iterations.

Interdisciplinary Teaching of Digital Competencies for Undergraduate Medical Students - Experiences of a Teaching Project by Medical Informatics and Medicine.

The increasing digitalization of medicine stressed the importance of teaching digital competencies in undergraduate medical education. However, in many medical curricula in Germany, medical informatics is underrepresented. Due the upcoming reorganization of medical undergraduate education in Germany, topics previously assigned to medical informatics represent curricular challenges for all medical disciplines. Against this background, experiences from the project DigiWissMed show how medical informatics can support the teaching of digital competencies in all disciplines of medical education. Therefore, interdisciplinary teaching teams of medical informatics professionals and physicians were formed. In different academic years, this teaching teams jointly designed and implemented new seminars to convey digital competencies. The seminars covers topics such as technology acceptance, telemedicine and assistive health care related to the medical specialty. So, in the project DigiWissMed, the practicability and usefulness of interdisciplinary teaching teams to convey digital competencies could be demonstrate. In the digitalization process of medicine, medical informatics plays a key role. For future-proof medical education, experts of this field should be involved in teaching digital competencies, too.

Interdisciplinary higher education with a focus on academic motivation and teamwork diversity

Despite the growing literature on interdisciplinary teaching experiences in higher education, setting an interdisciplinary course remains an intuitive process of problematic transmission among teachers. We defined an interdisciplinary course structure grounded in constructivism, academic motivation, and social and managing psychology. The teaching strategy included teamwork, problem-based learning (PBL), and activities to fostering academic motivation and working with diverse perspectives. Six interdisciplinary teaching teams developed courses for undergraduate students from multiple university areas. The student course experience questionnaire and student reflective writing pieces were used as instruments for data collection, and a mixed-methods approach was used for data analysis. From the student perspective, participating in an interdisciplinary course influenced the development of four top skills and attitudes: to work as a team member, to explore ideas confidently with other people, to develop as a person, and to develop relevant, ethical, social, and professional perspectives. Impact was also found in developing enthusiasm for learning, tackling unfamiliar problems, and becoming an active enquiring learner. Results indicated course characteristics linked to five academic motivation areas, pointing to 'success' and 'caring' experiences as the most influential. Also, teamwork was a central aspect of the experience, positively influenced by group diversity and the development of a learning community. In summary, this work offers insights into interdisciplinary course development and evaluation, guiding teachers to focus on aspects rarely attended in traditional higher education courses.

Working beyond disciplines in teacher teams: teachers' revelations on enablers and inhibitors.

IntroductionHealth professions education faces transitions from monodisciplinary to integrated education and from soloist teachers to interdisciplinary teacher teams. Interdisciplinary teamwork has been found complex and prone to conflict. Teachers’ perceptions of why some teams work and learn as a real interdisciplinary team and others do not are lacking in this setting. We studied the factors that teachers perceive as enabling and/or inhibiting interdisciplinary team learning.MethodsIn this exploratory, qualitative study, we conducted 17 semi-structured, vignette-guided interviews with teachers recruited from diverse disciplines in undergraduate health professions programmes at Maastricht University, the Netherlands, through maximum variation sampling. Team learning research informed data collection and template analysis.ResultsWe identified three themes representing the factors that teachers perceived to influence interdisciplinary team learning: ‘alignment/misalignment with the educational philosophy’ (regarding personal attributes, tendencies and motivation), ‘leadership practices’ (encompassing team vision, responsibility and reflection), and ‘involvement in organisational processes’ (covering organisational decision-making, support and learning opportunities). For interdisciplinary team learning in development of integrated education, teachers emphasised their personal ability to move beyond disciplinary boundaries. Shared team leadership enabled the creation of a shared vision, shared responsibility, and team reflection. Lastly, teacher involvement in educational management, peer support and learning was considered important.DiscussionTo work beyond disciplines in health professions education, teachers should take an interest in integrated education, share responsibility and work in an environment where people continuously learn from others. Organisations can facilitate this by involving teachers in decision-making processes and providing faculty development aimed to foster shared leadership and team reflection.Supplementary InformationThe online version of this article (10.1007/s40037-020-00644-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

学際的なティーム・ティーチングによる学生の英語発信力育成 ―薬学・生命科学専門分野の教員と英語教員はどのようにコラボレーションできるか―

学際的なティーム・ティーチングによる学生の英語発信力育成 ―薬学・生命科学専門分野の教員と英語教員はどのようにコラボレーションできるか―

Transition from content expert to interdisciplinary educator: narrative accounts from health and law

ABSTRACT Interdisciplinary education is gaining prominence in higher education, but little is known about the experiences and professional development needs of interdisciplinary educators. Through the lenses of self-reflection, peer review, and the educational literature, this paper uses a narrative enquiry approach to explore the lived experiences of two academics as they transition from a focus on their disciplines into roles as interdisciplinary educators. By exploring sequential events, we identify five key phases: making the move, starting out, the teaching experience, learning more, and looking forward. We faced many challenges, including working with an interdisciplinary teaching team, feeling ‘undisciplined’, and the need for an adaptive curriculum. Based on our experiences, there is a real opportunity for academic developers to design and implement initiatives to support academics embarking on interdisciplinary teaching.

Exploration and Practice of International Collaborative Teaching Mode for Innovation Talents

In order to enrich the training modes for internationalized and innovative talents, universities from China, Japan and Korea have cooperated each other since 2012, and established a consortium named Innovative Research & Education of Asia (IRE). The consortium proposed the “student-centered, innovation-oriented and multiple cooperation” teaching concept. To achieve the objective of innovation talent education, an international interdisciplinary teaching team has been formed and three international innovation engineering education projects have been created. Furthermore, an international collaborative training system for innovation talents has been designed. Up to now, more than 20 colleges and universities joins the IRE consortium and 2000 Asian students participated in the training system. The successful cases demonstrate that the proposed teaching system is effective and has become a famous example of interdisciplinary engineering innovation education for talents. 

How Teachers Meet in Interdisciplinary Teams: Hangouts, Distribution Centers, and Melting Pots.

To explore team learning processes among interdisciplinary teacher teams in the development of integrated health professions education and to investigate students' perspectives on the quality of the educational courses. Using an exploratory, sequential mixed-methods design, the first author conducted 17 vignette-guided, semistructured interviews with teachers originating from diverse disciplines. These teachers worked in different courses of integrated, undergraduate health professions programs at the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University, the Netherlands. The interview guide and vignettes were based on team learning research. The interviews sought to establish how interdisciplinary teacher team members work together on integrated curricula. The vignettes reflected constructs of team learning processes: sharing, co-construction, and constructive conflict. Data were collected between November 2017 and March 2018 and analyzed using template analysis. Sequentially, course evaluation data were used to provide a descriptive analysis of students' perspectives on educational quality (course organization, structure, learning effect, and alignment). Three team approaches were identified. In fragmented teams or "hangouts," teachers individually worked on tasks that they were interested in, leaving their disciplinary mark. Framework-guided teams or "distribution centers" aimed to work within the given frameworks and organizational expectations, striving for disciplinary balance. Integrated teacher teams or "melting pots" used an interdisciplinary approach on all topics and put students at the center. Integrated teams reflected high-level team learning processes and were most satisfied with their (team)work. In contrast, fragmented and framework-guided teams mainly reflected low-level team learning processes. Students evaluated courses of integrated teacher teams highest on all investigated quality items (course organization, structure, learning effect, and alignment). Successful interdisciplinary teacher teams are represented by an integrated approach with high-level team learning behavior and the best course evaluations. Therefore, health professions education management should actively encourage and facilitate integrated teacher teamwork.

Embedding online, design-focused data visualization instruction in an upper-division undergraduate atmospheric science course

An interdisciplinary undergraduate atmospheric science modeling course was cotaught at a midsize public university by three professors from atmospheric science, statistics, and design using a blended learning approach. The in-class portion of the course taught upper-level students numerical weather prediction modeling and statistical evaluation methods. Online modules were used to teach data visualization techniques and three foundational design principles upon which their efficacy depends : legibility, visual hierarchy, and appropriate use of color. Geoscience students need data visualization skills to prepare for careers in government, industry, and research that increasingly require work with big data and communication with diverse collaborators and audiences. This article focuses on the instructional approach for the visualization component of the course—specifically, the three teaching innovations used: online modules, an interdisciplinary teaching team, and design-focused data visualization instruction. Although course enrollment was low at four students, several valuable lessons were learned that can improve the teaching of visualization in geoscience courses, including the utility of structuring visualization instruction around two separate but complementary visualization skills: visualization for analysis and visualization for sharing knowledge. Evaluation of students’ visualization work at the conclusion of the course demonstrated improvement in the foundational design principles as well as improved ability to select appropriate visualization strategies for different situations. The methods used to assess these improvements are presented alongside illustrative examples of student work. Pre- and postcourse surveys indicate the students felt more confident in creating data visualizations upon completion of the course, and qualitative assessments of student work confirm increased application of foundational design principles in visualizations created by the students. The authors argue that teaching visualization as an online supplement to other geoscience instruction is a potentially replicable model for improving students’ learning about visualization. This is especially true when such instruction relies on open-source programs and materials and leverages interdisciplinary expertise in course design.