Session Information
01 SES 13 A, Research Perspectives on Team Teaching
Paper Session
Contribution
Since the seminal article on co-teaching models by Friend and Cook (1995), co-teaching has taken root in both classrooms and research. Co-teaching is widely examined at all levels of education from kindergarten to higher education, covering various subject areas and several research fields such as coaching and co-teaching as a tool of teacher training (e.g., Allen et al., 2014; Guise et al., 2017; Underwood et al., 2016). Co-teaching is generally defined as a collaborative practice in which two or more teachers plan, teach and evaluate together a group of learners (e.g., Fluijt et al., 2016). Moreover, as most of the literature on co-teaching draws from inclusive education, aiming for high-quality education for all learners, it is defined particularly as a practice between a special education teacher and a general education teacher, yet it can be practised between any two teachers (e.g., Härkki et al., 2021). In our understanding, co-teaching is a multifaceted practice based on teachers’ shared vision and responsibilities concerning teaching and learning for all students (Fluijt et al., 2016).
Much of the existing oeuvre of research has focused primarily on co-teaching models, and the trend has resulted in the prevailing understanding of the most common model in classrooms being the simplest one, that is, one-teach one assist (Scruggs et al., 2007). However, relatively little is known about how teachers learn to co-teach.
In general, the aim of teacher learning is change in teachers’ cognition and knowledge, beliefs, behaviour, skills or attitudes (Hoekstra & Korthagen, 2011; Vermunt & Endedijk, 2011). Additionally, the role of teacher identity appears to be playing a role in teachers’ professional learning both as a target of the intended change and interacting with the learning process (Beijaard, 2019; Meijer, 2011). Teachers themselves are also individuals with variation in their willingness to learn new things (Van Eekelen et al., 2006).
In this review, we investigated the relationship of co-teaching and teacher learning in more detail. We decided to limit the scope of our investigation to literature focusing on co-teaching between at least two qualified teachers in K-12 education[1] and chose to look at the studies reporting professional development (PD) programmes related to co-teaching. PD programmes were chosen as the focus of this review because PD inherently contains the premise of goal-oriented teacher learning, aimed at changes in teachers’ thinking and/or practice.
In discussing teacher learning as a focus of research, Kennedy (2019) posed three main questions for researchers: first, what is it that teachers are supposed to be learning; second, what is the process of how teachers learn; and the third, how can teacher learning be evaluated. These questions led this review, as we applied them in the context of co-teaching and teachers’ professional learning.
The aim of this review is to explore the relationship between teacher learning and co-teaching in the context of professional development on co-teaching. We argue that teachers’ learning process within co-teaching is a difficult phenomenon to recognise, and thus often go unheeded. We will address the following research questions:
1. What features of co-teaching are the focus of teacher learning in the studies of professional development programmes on co-teaching?
2. How is teacher learning supported in the studies of professional development programmes on co-teaching?
3. How is teacher learning investigated/evaluated in the studies of professional development programmes on co-teaching?
[1] K-12, from kindergarten to high school, refers to publicly supported education system in US and is similar in many other countries
Method
We used an evidence-based Transparent Reporting of Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) protocol as a guide for conducting this review (Page et al., 2021). We searched the two largest databases covering educational research, Ebsco and ProQuest. The inclusion criteria were the following: 1) the abstract or the title had to include one of the following keywords: "co-teaching" OR coteaching OR "co-teach*" OR coteach* OR "co-teach" OR coteach OR "co-taught" OR cotaught, while not including any of the following: "higher education" OR college OR university OR "post secondary" OR post-secondary OR postsecondary OR tertiary OR vocational; 2) peer-reviewed, 3) published in English, 4) published in scholarly or academic journal, 5) published in 2009 – 2018. The result after removing the doubles was 567 articles. Full-text versions were found from 154 articles which were assessed for eligibility. 98 full-text reports passed the first round of screening. In the next phase of the study selection process, we hand-picked the papers which focused on co-teaching as teacher professional learning, resulting in 18 papers. The final phase of the study selection process was to exclude reports which did not focus on a clearly defined teacher professional development programme for improving co-teaching. The final sample comprised eight studies and nine full-text reports. The selected nine papers are marked with asterisk in the list of references. The analysis of the papers covered three themes: 1) the PD programme as the context of learning, 2) features related to the teacher learning process, 3) evaluation of teacher learning. In detail, the following items were extracted: ● PD programme characteristics (e.g. length, content and aims) ● intensity and timespan of co-teaching ● teacher roles in co-teaching team, ● research questions, ● definition of co-teaching, ● co-teaching activities, ● justification for introducing co-teaching ● co-teacher and student characteristics ● study context (e.g., country, region, grade level) ● co-teaching implementation time span. ● recognition of teachers’ previous practical knowledge ● description of teacher learning process ● teachers’ reported learning ● learning activities ● means of evaluating teacher learning
Expected Outcomes
Regarding the focus of teacher learning, the findings of this review will present the features of co-teaching as described in the introduction, literature review and method sections of the reports, and describes how the co-teaching framework was set in terms of features of co-teaching as practice and as a partnership. Additionally, we will discuss the relation of co-teaching to teachers’ learning. In the PD programmes we studied, the role of co-teaching was approached as a focus of teacher learning (four studies) as well as a learning context of teacher learning (five studies). Regarding the support for teacher learning we will present the duration and density of the studied PD programmes, recognition of teachers’ prior knowledge and the learning activities teachers were involved in. Regarding the last research question, teachers’ learning was evaluated by observing the teachers, through questionnaires or teachers’ descriptions of the classroom changes, and in one study teacher learning was not evaluated at all. This review is one effort to link the fields of co-teaching and teacher learning. Our findings suggest that the relationship between co-teaching and teacher learning remained rather light in general. This is an important finding as teacher learning is a process in which the focus of learning, the means of learning and the evaluation of learning are all interconnected. Thus the conceptualisation of co-teaching affects what teachers are supposed to learn, and what they are supposed to learn should be inevitably linked to the learning methods. Moreover, the evaluation of teacher’s learning should focus on the learning goals of the programme. Our review also revealed that the literature on varying quality of the professional development programmes related to co-teaching makes it challenging to draw reliable conclusions about the impact of such programmes on teacher learning.
References
Allen, D. S., et al. (2014). Changing traditions: Supervision, co-teaching, and lessons learned in a professional development school partnership. Educational Considerations. Beijaard, D. (2019). Teacher learning as identity learning: Models, practices, and topics. Teachers and Teaching: Theory into Practice. *Bryant Davis, K. E., et al. (2012). Planning in the middle: Co-planning between general and special education. Journal of Educational & Psychological Consultation. *Faraclas, K. L. (2018). A professional development training model for improving co-teaching performance. International Journal of Special Education. Fluijt, D., et al. (2016). Team-reflection: the missing link in co-teaching teams. European journal of special needs education. Friend, M., L., & Cook, D. (1995). Co-teaching: Guidelines for creating effective practices. Exceptional Children. Hoekstra, A., et al. (2009). Experienced teachers' informal learning: Learning activities and changes in behavior and cognition. Teaching and Teacher Education. Härkki, T., et al. (2021). Co-teaching in non-linear projects: A contextualised model of co-teaching to support educational change. Teaching and Teacher Education. *Jang, S. (2010). The impact on incorporating collaborative concept mapping with coteaching techniques in elementary science classes. School Science and Mathematics. Kennedy, M. M. (2019). How we learn about teacher learning. Review of Research in Education. *Nilsson, P. (2015). Catching the moments - coteaching to stimulate science in the preschool context. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education. Page, M. J., et al. (2021). The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. PLoS Med, 18(3). *Pearl, C., et al. (2012). A five-year retrospective on the Arkansas department of education co-teaching project. Professional Development in Education. *Ploessl, D. M., et al. (2010). On the same page: Practical techniques to enhance co-teaching interactions. Intervention in School and Clinic. *Scheeler, M. C., et al. (2010). Providing immediate feedback to co-teachers through bug-in-ear technology: An effective method of peer coaching in inclusion classrooms. Teacher Education and Special Education. Scruggs, T. E., et al. (2007). Co-teaching in inclusive classrooms: A metasynthesis of qualitative research. Exceptional Children. *Shaffer, L., & Thomas-Brown, K. (2015). Enhancing teacher competency through co-teaching and embedded professional development. Journal of Education and Training Studies. *Thomas-Brown, K. A., & Sepetys, P. (2011). A veteran special education teacher and a general education social studies teacher model co-teaching: The CoPD model. Journal of the American Academy of Special Education Professionals. Vermunt, J. D., & Endedijk, M. D. (2011). Patterns in teacher learning in different phases of the professional career. Learning and Individual Differences.
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