Issues of teacher collaboration and co-teaching are currently being discussed in relation to both policy and practice. Teaching is a changing profession with different phases; nevertheless, it has traditionally been a profession of solitary individuals (Hargreaves, 2000). New era might be emerging, however, since teacher collaboration and co-teaching are mentioned in official documents, such as in the Finnish special education strategy proposal (Finnish Ministry of Education, 2007). The main idea of this inclusive act is to provide pupils with flexible support, contrary to present, rather heavy special education system. The situation in many other countries is probably very similar to Finland, where special education teachers use only 7% of their teaching time in general education classrooms together with another teacher (Takala, Pirttimaa, & Törmänen, 2009). However, co-teaching could enhance the flexibility of teaching.

Thousand, Villa & Nevin (2006) have presented four models of co-teaching. Insupportive teaching, one teacher leads the lesson while other teacher supports individual pupils as needed. When two or more teachers work with their own small group in the same room, it is parallel teaching.  In complementary teaching, one teacher supports the instruction provided by the other teacher. Team teaching refers to the shared responsibility of teachers for planning, teaching and assessment of a group of pupils. Furthermore, the presence of two teachers allows the use of various groupings within a class. However, it has not been studied how teachers take their professions into considerations when they work together. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine in detail the teaching practices the teachers had in co-teaching. We had three research questions: 1. What kind of roles the teachers take during the co-taught lessons? 2. What kind of groupings the teachers use? 3. How do teachers justify the roles they take?

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