How should team teaching be practised?

Ingrid Shafer, Ph.D. of University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, in her article “Team Teaching: Education for the Future” mentions two forms of team teaching:

1. All instructors are jointly responsible for course content, presentations, and grading. They interact in front of the class, discussing specific topics from divergent perspectives.
2. All instructors are jointly responsible for course content and grading. However, they take turns presenting material appropriate to their individual areas of specialization. At times when they are not called upon to lecture, other participants remain in an essentially subordinate role, contributing no more than occasional comments and questions.
In addition to the mentioned two approaches there exists another version of team teaching:
3. A third model is occasionally called team teaching, but lacks the shared responsibility and coherent structure of the first two. In this version, one coordinator alone is responsible for course content and grading. Extensive and regular use is made of guest lecturers and panels, and the material presented in this manner is an integral part of the overall course design.
(http://www.usao.edu/~facshaferi/teamteaching.htm)

Karin Goetz (www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~egallery/goetz.html) makes a distinction between two categories of team teaching:

Category A - when two teachers are working with the same group of students at the same time.
Category B - the teachers work together but (a) not always teach the same groups of students, or (b) if they do, they do not teach these students at the same time.

Robinson and Schaible (1995) mention six models of Category A team teaching. The method usually involves a combination of these models according to the personalities of the teachers and the students.
• Traditional Team Teaching: the instructors teach content and skills to all students, e. g. one teacher may present the new material to the students while the other teacher constructs a concept map on the overhead projector as the students listen to the presenting teacher.
• Collaborative Teaching: a traditional team teaching situation in which the teachers work together in designing the course and teach the material not by the usual monologue, but rather by exchanging and discussing ideas and theories in front of the learners. The team teachers work not only together, but the students implement group learning techniques for the learners (small-group work, student-led discussion and joint test-taking.
• Complimentary / Supportive Team Teaching: occurs when one teacher is responsible for teaching the content to the students, while the other teacher takes charge of providing follow-up activities on related topics or on study skills.
• Parallel Instruction: the class is divided into two groups and each teacher is responsible for teaching the same material to her/his smaller group. This model is traditionally used together with other forms of team teaching, and is very appropriate when students are involved in projects or problem-solving activities, as the teacher can roam and give students individualized support.
• Differentiated Split Class: the class is split up into smaller groups according to learning needs. Each teacher provides the respective group with the instruction required to meet their learning needs. One teacher would challenge the learners who grasped the concept more quickly, while the second teacher would likely review or re-teach those students who require further instruction.
• Monitoring Teacher: one teacher is responsible for instructing the entire class, while the other teacher circulates the room and monitors student understanding and behaviour.

Karin Goetz points out that category B team teaching can be manifested many forms:
• Team members meet to share ideas and resources but function independently. Deborah Rumsey in Mathematics Teacher (Rumsey, 1999) describes cooperative teaching in which instructors teach independently, but share teaching ideas and resources. This version of cooperative teaching presumes weekly meetings to discuss the concepts to be discussed during the following week of classes, to present ways of teaching and assessing these concepts and to share new ideas among teachers, and a teaching-resource notebook that is a collection of teachers’ best ideas.
• Teams of teachers teach independently, but use a common resource centre.
• A team in which members teach different sub-groups within the whole group, but share a common group of students and plan the instruction process together.
• One teacher plans the instructional activities for the entire team. This model does not take full advantage of the team concept.
• The team members share planning, but each instructor teaches his/her own specialized skills area to the whole group of students. An example would be five instructors teaching five different topics in to five different groups of students, and rotating throughout the duration of the course. (www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~egallery/goetz.html)