Abstract
Our recent research focuses on co-teaching in which two teachers of different disciplines teach alongside one another. We believe the relation to faculty disciplines can vary depending the subject and type of classroom (i.e. large lecture hall, smaller graduate seminars, or hard vs. soft sciences, etc.).
In the first section of the paper we briefly discuss the method of co-teaching and how it is used in higher education. We agree with pedagogs Chapman, Hyatt, et al, that co-teaching as an "effective, evidence-based instructional strategy in which two or more caring professionals share responsibility for a group of students and work collaboratively to add instructional value to enhance their effort." (Chapman, C., Hyatt.
C. H., 2011, p. 19).
Although co-teaching started in special education, its popularity has increased in rectent year to a variety of other subjects. Bacharach, Heck, Dahlberg (2008) found that students appreciate being exposed to different views of the same theme which enhanced group discussions.
However, co-teaching might not only be a valuable experience for students, but also for teachers: co-preparation outside the classroom as well as teaching in the classroom can reflective, enlightening as well as professionally satisfying (Bacharach, Heck, Dahlberg, 2008). The second part discusses the opportunities of co-teaching and describes the best situations to use a variety of methods.
We also focus on the difficulties and/or struggles of co-teaching. We furthermore analyze three different tandem settings of teacher educators: one, different areas of expertise (pedagogy and psychology); two, different relation to practice (academic and practitioner); and three, different teaching experience (experienced and newcomer).
The data are gathered by open-ended questions and interviews with both students and teachers who are experienced with co-teaching. Data analysis is done by thematic coding using the MAXQDA software.
We look at three different phases of the co-teaching process: lesson preparation, in class teaching, debriefing and reflection. We also look on the opportunities and constraints from a perspective of both students and teachers.
We feel, although our research is preliminary, that our findings have shown to provide a positive teaching environment that can be applied to a variety of disciplines and a variety of educational levels of study.