What is Team Teaching?
Team teaching is an approach to instruction that involves two or more staff teaching in the same unit or course. It is common across the Faculty of Arts, where teams of Convenor(s) and Tutor(s) work together to facilitate a unit. However, there are multiple approaches to team teaching with various terms used to describe them. The most common approaches include:
Co-Facilitative Approach – All members in the team collaborate across all aspects of the unit, including design, teaching and assessment. Students can contact any member of the team for feedback/advice. This approach is common for units with multiple Convenors.
Tag-Team / Breakout Approach – All members in the team collaborate across all aspects of the unit (including design, teaching and assessment), but implement aspects of the unit within their own designated group of students or section. Team members only assess their own students’ work and provide feedback/advice only to their own students. They engage in frequent collaborative meetings with teaching team to debrief, discuss how the unit is progressing, problems and student feedback. This approach is common for units with multiple Tutors.
Specialty Approach – All members in the team collaborate across all aspects of the unit (including design, teaching and assessment), but team members are not delegated to teach particular whole sections or classes. Instead, certain team members may teach a segment/topic, or facilitate an activity, within a class in the unit (because it falls under their expertise area). Specialists typically only assess work produced from the sections they have taught, and interact with students involved in those sections.
Basic Approach – Involves two or more team members collaborating to design the foundation or basic structure of a unit they are co-teaching, but then are delegated to take complete ownership of their ‘piece’ of the unit, including design, modalities, texts, assessment design. They only assess their own students’ work and provide feedback/advice only to their own students. Students direct their questions and feedback to the instructor responsible that that section of the unit. Teaching team meets occasionally to discuss how their respective sections are progressing according to the collaboratively basic structure. This approach is common to large units with two or three Convenors.
What is Involved in Team Teaching?
- A breakdown of all the academic and administrative tasks relevant to the unit or course and the estimated amount of time taken to undertake these tasks.
- High levels of organisation, planning, scheduling, and delegation.
- A communication protocol, for all team members to keep in touch with each other.
- Positive rapport between teaching team members (to enable collaboration to take place).
- Regular team ‘check-ins’ to keep track of unit administration and milestones.
How do I plan for Team Teaching?
The figure below lays out the stages for planning and carrying out team teaching. You can adapt these tasks as required.
When considering these steps, consider how they slot into pre-Session admin, during-Session activities, and post-Session evaluation.
Contact the Faculty of Arts LD&P team to learn more, ask how you can start using Team Teaching in your unit, and best balance your teaching team for next Session.
References
- Meizlish, D., & Anderson, O. (2018). Teaching in Teams: A Planning Guide for Successful Collaborations. CRLT Occasional Paper No. 37. Center for Research on Learning and Teaching.