Abstract:

Against the backdrop of the financial meltdown in Greece, its rigid bureaucratic system, and a hint of social unrest, the American College of Greece (ACG) is positioning itself to emerge from the crisis in a stronger international position. As the oldest of the American colleges abroad, ACG is a private, non-profit US accredited institution of higher education in Athens. It is experiencing a threshold moment as new American leadership is initiating substantial curricular and programmatic changes. This presentation will focus on one dimension of a particularly major transition at the college: becoming an innovative site of transnational best educational practices. In fall 2011, ACG will be an American and a British-partner institution as the college is entering a collaboration with the UK-based Open University (OU). In addition to other benefits accrued to stakeholders by this UK / European Union alliance, ACG is implementing a new teaching and learning model that highlights, according to its website, “the best of American and British systems.”

This presentation will explore the challenges and strategies for integrating a new Anglo-American teaching and learning pedagogy on this international campus. A new teacher training program hopes to assist the college’s mostly Greek faculty in synthesizing progressive American teaching methodologies with those from the British system, all while maintaining the institution’s distinctive Hellenic character. Many instructors are finding themselves in new methodological territory as they are shifting from instructor-centered teaching methods (still prevalent in the Greek educational system) to student-centered methods in the context of a more structured and externally accountable US-UK educational system. Some important questions this paper will examine include: How can the school exploit this cross-cultural educational mashup to re-establish essential learning values at an institution without a history of teacher training? In other words, can the OU validation provide the impetus to reinterpret best American classroom practices in this particular Greek context? As a case-study-in-progress, this presentation will conclude with recommendations about the role of transnational teaching methodologies in the increasingly internationalized world of higher education.