Team Teaching: advantages and challenges

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 given the opportunity 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 about 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 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