Daring to be Different; Interdisciplinary Study and Team-Teaching in the Cross-Cultural Classroom

Daring to be Different; Interdisciplinary Study and Team-Teaching in the Cross-Cultural Classroom

Internationalization and globalization have affected education as importantly as finance, economics, and politics. This is nowhere more true than in the American Studies classroom at the University of Hong Kong, where "American-style teaching" has come to be a celebrated phenomenon. In some respects this is a surprising development in a university and city with strong British-based curriculum traditions and teacher-oriented Asian classroom practices. Nevertheless, creative teachers who worked well together in an interdisciplinary classroom developed a student-oriented American Studies curriculum where students and teachers alike participated in a unique learning experience that valued knowledge transfer, student discussion, team-teaching, student-faculty interaction, and self-conscious awareness of international teaching methods that can, and sometimes cannot, work.