Team teaching was firstly introduced by William M. Alexander, also known as the father of the American middle school in 1963 (http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/4754).
Team teaching is now used in all grade levels and across disciplines. When done correctly, this approach has been shown to create bonding opportunities for students and to engage teachers in collaborative, interdisciplinary planning
a. Definition of team teaching
Team teaching has been defined in such a way that it involves a range of characteristics. According to Collin dictionary.com, team teaching is a system of instruction in which several teachers work cooperatively to integrate studies in various subjects for a single group of students. Team teaching, which is also called collaborative teaching or co-teaching, is an instructional strategy in which two or more teachers are responsible for teaching a course or a group of students.
Goetz (2000: 2) defines team teaching as group of two or more teachers working together to plan conduct and evaluate the learning activities for the same group of learners. Quinn and Kanter (1984: 2) also define team teaching as simply team work between two qualified instructors who, together, make presentations to an audience.
The other stated that team teaching, in the most general sense, encompasses a wide variety of arrangements. One specific form, which has become quite prevalent in recent
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years, is having two teachers in the classroom teaching simultaneously (Benoit, 2001:
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Co-teaching (Cook & Friend, 1996; Walther-Thomas et al., 1996; Roth & Tobin, 2001), cooperative teaching (Bauwen & Hourcade, 1995) and team teaching (Welch &
Sheridan, 1995; Sandholtz, 2000) are synonyms. The main components are two educators, instruction, learners, and common settings.
Operational definitions result in varying amounts of collaboration and professional development, but team teaching itself is definable as allocation of teaching responsibilities; planning as a team, but with individual instruction; cooperative planning, instruction and evaluation of learning experiences (Sandholtz, 2000).
Team teaching improves the quality of teaching and learning in schools (Knezevic & Scholl, 1996; Smylie, 1995; Talbert & McLaughlin, 1993). Teaming, compared to teachers‟ open discussion in regular meetings, is a collaborative practice requiring closer involvement with teammates‟ work; such as peer coaching and interdisciplinary teaming. Teachers help each other and improve teaching practice by observing each other in the classroom, designing curricula, and/or teaching together.
This makes intellectual, social, and emotional demands supportive of their motivation (Little, 2003).
Looking at above definitions of team teaching, the researcher may conclude that team – teaching is a strategy in which two or more teachers work together in the classroom. Their collaboration is started from the beginning to end which covers all aspects of teaching; planning the materials, Lesson plan, teaching in the classroom,
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and evaluation. The implementation of team teaching will reduce the teachers‟ teaching load since all aspects of teaching are shared together.
b. Team Teaching in Asian Countries
Team teaching has been widely implemented by East - Asian countries like Japan, Korea, and Hongkong. The concept of this strategy is to collaborate between native English Speaking Teachers (NEST) and L2 English teachers (Charles, 2006). In Japan, this team teaching was first introduced in 1987. It aimed at enriching foreign language education and to promote internationalism.
In line with this scheme, the so-called EPIK (English Program in Korea) was carried out since 1996 in Korea. This program has smaller scale than what has been applied in Japan. The stated aims of EPIK are to improve the English speaking abilities of Korean students and teachers, to develop cultural exchanges and to reform English teaching methodologies (EPIK, 2004). Choi (2001) suggests that although team teaching was intended to be a key notion in EPIK, it was not enforced widely so that unqualified NESTs had the difficulty of managing students alone in the classroom.
c. Team – Teaching In Indonesia
In Indonesia, It is a common phenomenon to see a teacher teaches one class by him/herself. The teaching process is conducted by individual teacher started from planning, teaching and evaluating. As a matter of fact, an individual teacher is suffer from this situation and cannot handle he class properly. The implementation of team teaching in Indonesian schools is not widely known and implemented. Though some researchers have shown the positive impact of team teaching, but the implementation of this strategy seems to be ignored. As seen in the public schools, teachers still work
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alone in the classroom. They have to run the class from the beginning till the end. In addition, the number of students and teachers (Teacher – students) ratio is not balanced.
d. Models of Team – Teaching
Robin Usher states that there are four common types of team teaching;
traditional, supportive, parallel, and differential instruction team teaching.
The first model of team teaching is traditional model. In this model, the teacher present the new material to the students by giving many examples, practices, while the other teacher constructs a concept map on the projector as the students listen to the presenting teacher. Usually the presenter is senior teacher or has more experience and the other is junior teacher or has little experience in teaching.
The second model is called complimentary/supportive team teaching. in this model, one teacher is responsible for teaching the content to the students, while the other teacher follows the activities on related topics or study skills. In other occasion, the teachers can be exchanged. It means that the teacher is responsible for teaching the content
The third model of team teaching is parallel instruction. To apply this model, the class is divided into two groups or three depends on member of the team or the number of students, the more the students the more groups in the class. Each teacher is responsible to teach the same material using one lesson plan. Each teacher has responsible to make the learning process of his or her group successful. It is possible that, in the last of time, the teacher will exchange their group in order to evaluate fairly.
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The last model is called Differentiated Split Class. In this model, the class is divided into smaller groups according to learning needs. Each teacher has responsible to meet students learning need. For example, one teacher may challenge the group of students who grasped the concept more quickly, while the second teacher will review those students who require further instruction or the group can be conducted according to the English competence of the students: speaking, listening, writing and reading. One teacher will handle the group of speaking and listening while the other reading and writing. In those models identified by Maroney, Robinson and Schaible (Goetz, 1995:3), the instructors work together but it is not necessary to teach at the same groups of students and at the same time.
e. The challenges of Team-Teaching
The difficulties of team teaching include lack of time to plan and run individual lessons, and so poor communication between teamed teachers. Consequently, as part of their daily schedule and load, teams were given an hour a day to meet and discuss (Usher, 2008).
In addition, team teaching leads the teachers to unclear teaching roles and guidelines. It is caused by the lack of after class meeting between the coordinator and the co-teachers. The different perceptions of each other‟s role led to some problematic issues in their in-class teaching. The observation by Khanh showed that the Native English Teacher did not feel comfortable with her partner who was a Vietnamese English teacher. As a result, both teachers experience confusion in the classroom (Khanh, 2011)
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f. The Advantages and Disadvantages of Team Teaching
There are many advantages of team teaching for both teachers and students.
For the teachers, team teaching will provide a partner who can work together in: setting objectives, making plans, implementing lessons and evaluating the results. They can share about drawing inspiration, providing them with constructive feedback on their teaching. This will also develop new teaching approaches by sharing from teachers involved, the junior teacher will improve his approach to teach from learning the senior teacher about the way to teach students, whereas the senior teacher will guide the others in practicing team teaching.
In addition, implementing team teaching increases the likelihood of sounder solutions regarding the discipline of problematic students. The members of team should constantly be actively involved in managing and teaching the class. So, the learning process of learner will be focused and of course the problematic students are minimized.
Finally, it will augment the opportunity for intellectual growth. It is not easy to find practical advice from senior teachers of professional publications but by using two teachers in the same classroom simultaneously, it will be a relatively new educational phenomenon.
In the perspective of students, Team teaching is also emerge positive impact.
The first advantage is that it can open a student's eyes to accept more than one opinion and to acting more cooperatively with others. Views from more than one teacher will permit the students to gain a mature level of understanding knowledge. More than one view will help students blur the black-and-white way of thinking common in our society,
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and see many shades of gray. The variety of teaching approaches used by team can also reach a greater variety of learning styles. Furthermore, as Coffey said that team teaching is conducted in order to provide a more supportive environment for students.
Team teaching will also increase students' level of understanding and retention, build students positive teamwork skills and attitudes (Robinson and Schaible, 1995), and students can compare the presentation of team teachers about the material in order to make a good conclusion in their understanding. In addition, team teaching enables student to obtain higher achievement.
Robinson and Schaible (1995) stated that “the benefits of collaborative learning include higher achievement, greater retention, improved interpersonal skills and increase in regard for group work for both students and teachers. The students will be motivated to learn and got the attention well from the teachers. They will be easy to consult to their teachers if there is problem of learning the material. Students will gain more time to talk since it is set in smaller groups
On the other hand, team teaching also brings disadvantages to both teachers and students as Goetz and EGallery explained in his Journal (2000: 8), for both teachers and students. Implementing team teaching will cause some negative impacts for teachers. Firstly, the teachers feel that the rift between two different teaching philosophies created a chasm in the team‟s working relationship. Some teachers are rigid personality types. They may like to a single method. They don‟t want to risk humiliation and discouragement at possible failures. Some of them dislike to the other teachers on the team. Secondly, it needs much time required prior to the implementation of the team teaching partnership for professional development.
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Members of team must arrange mutually agreeable times for setting plan, designing syllabus, preparing individual lesson plans, teaching students, and evaluate the results.
They need much time to make meeting to those activities. Therefore, time management is the most challenging problems for teachers.
Team teaching does not only affect the teachers but also the students. There are several drawbacks of team teaching affected the students. Firstly, the students are expected to be grouped with their best friends. In this case, grouping by the teachers is sometimes not satisfied the students. Some students fell more comfortable with some friends but not comfortable with others. Therefore, students tend to choose their own group mate rather than being grouped by teachers.
Secondly, some students may feel frustration and discontentment about having more than one teacher. Students will be worry about the diversity and ambiguity within team teaching. Furthermore, they may become confused by more than one way of looking at grading assignments. They feel worry about the techniques of evaluating the achievement which to be different. The different techniques of teaching will effect to the achievement of learner.
g. Procedure of Organizing the Team Teaching
There are three main steps in organizing team teaching. These three steps encompass planning, organizing, and evaluating.
Planning is the first essential steps in Team teaching. There are some activities conducted by teachers in this step. Firstly, teachers decide the objectives of the lesson.
These objectives will be then adjusted with the methods. After deciding the objectives, the teachers decide or discuss the details of the material taught, whether the material is
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suitable with the students‟ level or not. Next, teachers share their duties, such as lead lecture, follow up work and supervision considering their interest and competencies.
After that, teachers select appropriate teaching aids and other inputs, if any, for generating learning environment. Finally, they decide ways and means to be adopted for evaluating the student performance.
The second step of team teaching is organizing. The organization of team teaching is decided by considering the needs of the learners. The following are the general activities which are usually performed by a team of teachers. The first of all, Teachers should select the appropriate communication strategy by considering the level of language competence of the learners. This is important to make the learning process runs smoothly. Secondly, implementing the team teaching based on the preferred types.
If the teachers are going to apply parallel instruction type, then they have to group the students into two or more groups and they start teaching in their group. Grouping could be based on the students‟ ability or it might also be based on gender since some students are reluctant to work with different gender. The next step is that follow up activities which are conducted after the group session is done. In this session, teachers review the lesson as a whole and they may also play some interactive games as the way to review the lesson.
The last step is evaluating. Evaluation is an important aspect of any type of teaching. It will be helpful to measure the performance of learners. It also provides reinforcement to the team of teachers as well as to the learners; this stage involves the following activities. Such as asking oral questions in which each question should measure a particular objective envisaged by the team, taking decision about the level of
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performance and realization of the objectives, diagnosing difficulties of the learners and providing the remediation and revising the planning and organizing phase of team teaching itself on the basis of evaluation of the student.