IN-PERSON New Schools of Thought

Abstract

In conversation with a professor about teaching contemporary students, she complained about the distraction of social media and lamented that she had lost the transformative nature of the classroom. Then she asked, “what do you do to teach current students?” Minett-Smith & Davis (2019) and Gono & de Moraes (2023) answered that question with relative erudition focusing on team teaching. In fact, Gono and de Moraes’ argue that team teaching “positively contributes to students’ critical thinking skills, learning experiences and engagement”. The gap in the literature is the silence about how team-teaching fosters engagement and learning amongst students who are English Language Learners (ELL). Thinking of RITChina students, who are ELL and were taught using a monological paradigm of teaching, the RITChina Team Teaching Model (TTM) fosters active learning and provides a creative solution to the question of the transformative nature of the classroom. It operates on a circular learning model that fosters repetition and reinforcement of learning in addition to a balance in delivery and output. It presents teaching as, prima facie, a collaborative encounter built on the principles of empathy and understanding while providing opportunity for interactions between and among students and faculty. Our presentation will achieve the following: • Introduce the pedagogical nature of RITChina’s TTM • Discuss how the advantages of the model override the perceived challenges • Discuss the pedagogical implications of the model for faculty and students • Discuss how the model offers a culturally sensitive approach to teaching and learning while disrupting the anxiety of teaching contemporary students.