Abstract:

The paper deals with team teaching technique, which may seem new and experimental, but it actually has a long career ranging from the Socratic dialogue to public medieval disputations. Though it lags behind in popularity among other innovative methods, it is very effective in the classroom. It has many pedagogical and intellectual advantages: it can help create a dynamic and interactive learning environment, provide instructors with a useful way of modeling thinking within or across disciplines and also inspire new research ideas and intellectual partnership among faculty.

The purpose of this paper is to identify various types of team teaching, to present views of experienced team teachers, to analyze the issues involved with team teaching, to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this method based on research literature, teacher experiences and student perspectives. The authors of the paper also provide information on their practice and challenges of using team teaching at Kazakh-British Technical University. They started implementing this technique 5 years ago. In this paper they share their experiences and provide teachers who are interested in this method with some tips on how to function effectively as equal team partners working together in the same classroom.

Keywords:

Team teaching, innovative methods, interactive learning environment, thinking across discipline, partnership among faculty.