What exactly is team teaching (TT)?

Although opinions slightly differ, essentially they reflect an unambiguous view upon team teaching:

• Ingrid Shafer, Ph.D. of University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma in her article “Team Teaching: Education for the Future” defines TT as a situation when “…two or more instructors are involved in the same course. Team members may come from closely allied disciplines, or they may derive from fields as disparate as art history and theoretical physics. Thus, while team teaching is frequently connected with an interdisciplinary approach to learning, the mere presence of a teaching team in a classroom does not by itself indicate a crossing of disciplines.”
(http://www.usao.edu/~facshaferi/teamteaching.htm)

• In her “Perspectives on Team Teaching (A Semester I Independent Inquiry)” Karin Goetz states that “team teaching can be defined as a group of two or more teachers working together to plan, conduct and evaluate the learning activities for the same group of learners.” (www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~egallery/goetz.html)

• Quinn and Kanter (1984) define team teaching as "simply team work between two qualified instructors who, together, make presentations to an audience."

• Rebecca Benoit and Bridget Haugh in “Team Teaching Tips for Foreign Language Teachers” report that “in foreign language teaching, particularly teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL), usually one in the pair is a native speaking assistant of the target language. The main teacher on the other hand, is usually more experienced and not a native speaker of the target language (hence the desire for a native speaking target language assistant). In foreign language teaching, particularly teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL), usually one in the pair is a native speaking assistant of the target language. The main teacher on the other hand, is usually more experienced and not a native speaker of the target language (hence the desire for a native speaking target language assistant).”