Collaborative Teaching 101

by Barbara Flanagan

Collaborative teaching, where two educators take responsibility for planning, teaching, and monitoring the success of all learners in a class, looks different from day to day and classroom to classroom. Why? Collaborative teaching, when done right, is a dynamic process that educators constantly reconfigure to fit their instructional plans and the learning needs of their students.

Jeanne Bauwens and Jack J. Hourcade in their 1997 article "Cooperative Teaching: Pictures of Possibilities" in Intervention in School and Clinic, 33, (pp. 81-85, 89) summarize possible teaching configurations for collaborative teaching. They suggest three approaches to implementing collaborative teaching: team teaching, supportive learning activities, and complementary instruction. First, Bauwens and Hourcade describe team teaching as educators jointly planning and presenting subject content to all students. Second, the authors describe supportive learning activities as those that reinforce, enrich, or enhance learning for all students. Finally, Bauwens and Hourcade describe the third approach to collaborative teaching, complementary instruction, as one educator takes primary responsibility for teaching content material and the other for teaching functional how-to skills so students can successfully understand and acquire the content material. Examples of how-to skills include note-taking, memorization techniques and locating main ideas and supporting details in passages.

Let’s apply some of these collaborative teaching approaches to a unit on the Civil War where a collaborative teaching team uses team teaching, supportive learning activities, and complementary instruction. For team teaching, one educator could teach information about the battles, economics, and the organization of the North. The other educator could teach similar information about the South. For complementary instruction, one educator could present a chronology of the important events, while the other educator might teach note-taking skills and mnemonics to help the students record and memorize the chronology. Finally, a supportive learning activity for this unit might include dividing students into 2 groups, with one group writing letters from the Northern perspective and the other writing letters from the Southern perspective.

Educators should realize two things before they use collaborative teaching. First, collaborative teaching is a fluid process and classroom teaching configurations should change and be responsive to curricular and students’ needs. Second, instructional planning precedes determining how and when to use these teaching configurations.

The list that follows, Collaborative Teaching 101, outlines some suggestions that appear in Bauwens and Hourcade’s article for varying team teaching, supportive learning activities, and complementary instruction. This is certainly not an exhaustive list. Educators can combine some of these suggestions to develop hybrid techniques that work for their teaching situation. The important point to remember is that collaborative teaching, like any worthwhile educational endeavor, takes a team commitment to be creative, thoughtfully plan, and continually monitor and adjust team efforts depending on students’ performance. Remember, great things come about through great effort!

Varied Configurations of Team Teaching

• One educator gives an overview of the content to be presented; the other visually supplements the presentation

• When order of instruction is not critical, divide students into 2 smaller heterogeneous groups with each educator teaching a different portion of the content

• One educator presents the basic information to the entire class, the other educator paraphrases, clarifies, and monitors student learning

• One educator presents basic information; the other educator develops and asks questions designed to move students to higher-order thinking

• One educator reviews basic content of some lesson while the other provides additional review (e.g., vocabulary instruction) for students who require additional work on specific components of the curriculum

• One educator monitors the large group taking a quiz; the other waits for students to bring their quiz to them to give them immediate feedback

Varied Configurations of Supportive Learning Activities

• Students are broken into 2 groups; within each group, students are taught a new skill by one of the 2 educators. Students are then paired off into dyads, each having a partner from the other group. Each peer tutors the other in the skill as one educator monitors the group work. The other educator provides small group enrichment or remedial work, as appropriate.

• Students are divided into 2 groups, one group is "pro" some issue, the other is "con". Each educator works with a group of students to help them develop their position and arguments. Each group makes a joint presentation to the other group.

Varied Configurations for Complementary Instruction

• Both educators demonstrate correct applications of some new skill. Students are paired into dyads in which they observe, critique, and record their observations of the educators’ use of these skills. Afterwards, each student demonstrates correct and incorrect uses of the new skills to his or her partner within the dyad. Educators circulate and monitor.

• One educator models a how-to skill, such as question-asking in interviews and the students practice this skill in their dyads. Often this structure is used to weave "mini-lessons" into daily content instruction.