Team Teaching - Collaboration can benefit teachers and students

Chapter Eight of Brookfield’s book, The Skillful Teacher: On Technique, Trust and Responsiveness in the Classroom, is about team teaching, an approach that can improve learning in diverse classrooms. According to Bess (2000), team teaching is “ a process in which all team members are equally involved and responsible for student instruction, assessment and the setting and meeting of learning objectives” (as quoted in Yanamandrum,2006, p. 50). Quinn and Kanter define team teaching as “simply team work between two qualified instructors who, together, make presentations to an audience” (as quoted in Goetz, paragraph 4). Goetz defines traditional team teaching as two equal teachers sharing the delivery of course content, which is different from collaborative teaching, defined as two teachers modelling critical discourse in front of the class. At a Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence lecture series, Landy and Anderson, award-winning Stanford professors, delivered and demonstrated a lecture on team teaching, with Landy at the front of the class as lead lecturer and Anderson at the centre of the room, setting up the main points and interjecting at times (Palmer, 2006). Team teaching offers opportunities for teachers to inspire each other, learn from each other, support each other and model critical discourse and knowledge creation for students (Chanmugam & Gerlach, 2013). For students, potential benefits range from experiencing different teaching styles and strategies, exposure to different perspectives on topics and integration and synthesis of concepts (Leavitt, 2002).

Teaching is a multi-disciplinary profession that requires expertise in on or more subjects, knowledge of pedagogical practice, proficiency with technological tools and resources and talent in leadership and human relations. In addition, teaching requires multicultural sensitivity, awareness of gender and race issues and an understanding of a wide variety of learning styles and abilities, to name only a few. As Brookfield states, teachers bring their unique strengths and weaknesses into the classroom and it is unrealistic and unfair to expect one person to adequately meet the needs and expectations of every student. Team teaching seems to be one of the approaches that can benefit both teachers and students in the context of today’s diverse classrooms.

Click here to go to my Instructional Strategies page and check out some links to learn more about Team Teaching.