Team Teaching: advantages and challenges

Advantages and challenges of team teaching

The content in this KB is taken from the article, Collaborative Teaching to Increase ELL Student Learning by York-Barr, J,. Ghere,G,, & Sommerness S..

Advantages

  • More flexible and creative use of the instructional time that advantaged students
  • Knowing more about all the students and seeing different student strengths allowed to view them in varied learning contexts
  • Greater shared ownership of students and student learning
  • Increased reflection on individual and collective teaching practices
  • More learning from and with colleagues about students and teaching and learning
  • Increased collective expertise resulting in greater effectiveness with a variety of students
  • Decreased teacher isolation, increased support, and feeling valued by colleagues
  • Itinerant teachers experiencing varied collaborative designs and strategies then being able to share those experiences and ideas across classrooms
  • Having more energy and greater enjoyment from teaching

Challenges

  • Loss of instructional and decision-making autonomy
  • Decreased flexibility and creativity given a set schedule for when additional instructional personnel would be present in classrooms
  • Increased communication demands are given instructional interdependence among teachers
  • Role shifts and confusion about how to share instructional time (e.g., who leads, who follows, how to co-teach) and how to share responsibilities (e.g., assessment, reporting)
  • Feelings of insecurity because teaching became public and teachers were expected to work with more diverse students than they had in the past
  • Differing “philosophies,” which was the term often used to describe differences between teachers related to orientations or beliefs about instruction and professional practice


Keywordsteam, collaborative, co-teaching, teachingDoc ID116450
OwnerTimmo D.GroupInstructional Resources
Created2022-02-02 13:23:39Updated2023-12-27 11:44:06
SitesCenter for Teaching, Learning & Mentoring
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