Collaborative Team-Teaching to Promote Interdisciplinary Learning in the Undergraduate Classroom: A Qualitative Study of Student Experiences.

The increased demand for more integrative curricular opportunities for postsecondary students has resulted in the exploration of new curricular methodologies which center on approaching today's "big ideas" or "grand challenges" from multiple disciplinary viewpoints. In this article we examine students' learning experiences within a new team-taught general education course designed to explore the big idea of "What does it mean to be human?" from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Semi-structured interviews with students provide insight on how learners are experiencing this new instructional model and its implications for interdisciplinary learning. Our conversations with students reveal that students affirm the value of interdisciplinary education and perceive this collaborative and co-instructed model as beneficial to their learning. This new curricular approach, while not without its challenges, was found to have positive implications for bolstering learner interest, fostering perspective-taking behaviors, and creating a classroom environment in which students perceive their intellectual contributions as valued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]