Team teaching to the top

01 December 2006

The Carrick Institute has honoured two UNSW sociologists for their excellence in team teaching.

Andrew Metcalfe and Ann Game are Associate Professors in the School of Sociology and Anthropology and have been teaching and researching together for more than fifteen years. The Carrick Awards for Australian University Teaching recognised the pair in its 2006 special category of ‘team teaching’ in a ceremony at Parliament House.

The Awards recognise the nation’s most outstanding university teachers in their fields. Metcalfe believes the key to team teaching has been in transforming a two hour lecture into a tutorial-style session.

“We’ve worked together for so long that we can turn a first-year lecture of 300 plus students into an interactive tutorial that will see up to 50 people actually speak - this is rare,” says Metcalfe. “It works because the students have done the readings and are able to actively participate in group work.”

Metcalfe and Game also spend a lot of time preparing for each class and don’t believe in ‘all purpose’ lectures.

“Each lecture is for that particular day for that particular class,” says Metcalfe. “We also find the students actually teach us so much through their questions and interaction in the classroom.“

Metcalfe and Game are currently writing a book about generosity entitled The Gift. The project is funded by a 2006 ARC grant.

The awards cap off a successful 2006 for UNSW, which also received nine citations earlier in the year for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning.