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Co-teaching can seem daunting for many in education. What co-teaching models are best? How can good co-teacher pairings be created? What happens when there are disagreements between co-teachers?
Despite these known challenges, research shows that co-teaching is an effective teaching model to encourage students’ learning, reduce the learning gap for students with learning difficulties, and support teachers’ collaboration and professional development. Many of the perceived challenges can, in fact, be utilized as benefits if properly managed.
This article will explain the main co-teaching models, consider the research on co-teaching models, and give suggestions for how to create successful co-teacher relationships. Though all transitions take time to become comfortable, co-teaching provides many benefits for everyone involved.
6 Co-Teaching Models
There are really an infinite number of ways teachers can collaborate in order to have successful lessons for their students. The list below is simply a well known set of co-teaching models that teachers could choose from.
Rather than thinking about choosing one model to use at all times, all pairs of teachers should use a variety of different co-teaching models depending on the type of activity being done, the personalities and preferences of the teachers themselves, and the amount of time and other resources available. The list will go from the simplest to the most complicated styles that teachers can try as they get more comfortable with one another.
- Observer and Teacher
The first co-teaching model has a separation of duties for teachers. One teacher will conduct the lesson as if they were alone and the other teacher will observe the lesson.
When choosing this co-teaching model, it is always important to have a specific thing or person being observed. If no goal is set, the observing teacher can easily end up simply watching a lesson without being able to make any useful contributions.
The observer could be watching the main teacher to give them feedback, the class to note energy and attention levels, or a specific student to watch for concerning behaviors. After the lesson or set of lessons, the observing teacher can debrief the main teacher on what they saw and the two professionals can then decide how best to act on the information gathered.
This co-teaching model is often most useful for a very short time of even just one activity or a maximum of a single class or perhaps two. Dedicated observing can be useful to quickly gather a lot of data to make an important decision, but observation can also always be done on the fly with other co-teaching models where both teachers are more actively contributing during class time.
- Main Teacher and Assistant Teacher
Another common co-teaching model is having one teacher focus on lecturing and giving instructions while another teacher is doing one to one triage of issues as they appear around the room. While the term “main” teacher makes it seem like they have the harder job, it is actually the assistant teacher who must be able to understand which students have needs and how long to work with each individual.
This co-teaching model is very comfortable for many teachers as it allows one teacher to have more direct control of the lesson plan while the other teacher focuses on pastoral needs leading both teachers being able to be more effective in their chosen area. These roles can be permanent if the teachers feel they are best suited for their respective roles, but very often it can be best for main and assistant teachers to switch roles based on the task being done or subject being taught.
Switching the main and assistant teacher allows for students to get the benefits of both teachers’ teaching styles and expertise along with ensuring both teachers get a feeling for what their partner does on a daily basis. This improves communication and allows for a more diverse classroom experience for all involved.
- Alternative Teaching
Alternative teaching is a co-teaching model where one teacher has a majority of the students and conducts a lesson with them while another teacher has a smaller group of students for a separate lesson. This is a tricky model that can be fantastic to help students that are behind catch up, but can quickly become a way students fall further behind.
Alternative teaching should be used sparingly as if the same students are always being separated from their peers, it can become embarrassing and cause them to simply fall further behind as they miss the main lesson to do things they are struggling with. However, alternative teaching can be great for a single session if a group of students, such as a sports team, were all absent for an important lesson and now need to catch up while the rest of the class does a review exercise or game.
This approach can also be useful when teachers notice two major types of mistakes in students’ work. If the majority of students had an issue in one area, but a smaller subset didn’t and needed work in other areas, the teachers could split them off to review their work with their specific mistake in mind. This way students spend more time looking over what they need to work on and get a lesson focused for their needs.
It is important, however, to not let alternative teaching turn into an unofficial special education program. Co-teaching can be great for learning support, but if the same students are constantly missing the main lesson to get easier content, even if more targeted to their needs, they are only going to fall further behind their peers who aren’t missing the main lesson. More about co-teaching models for special education in the next section.
- Station Teaching
Station teaching is a newer co-teaching model, but one of the most useful as it allows for multiple things to be completed at the same time. In station teaching, students are broken up into smaller groups and each go to a separate learning “station” where they have a task to complete or a lesson to learn.
There can be as many different stations as the teachers feel is useful for the students. Each teacher can take one station to facilitate a lesson or give instructions and there can also be other stations where students can work independently. Alternatively, teachers can float between stations as they see fit.
Station teaching should be used more often because it is efficient with time, makes students more active learners, and gets kids up out of their chairs moving instead of slowly falling asleep at their desks. Station teaching is also useful for classes with highly different levels as students can often complete stations at their own pace and do not always have to wait for their peers.
- Parallel Teaching
Parallel teaching is an interesting, but rarely used co-teaching model where teachers split the class in half and both give a lesson on a topic at the same time in the same way. While this might sound like a waste of time, even though both teachers are doing the exact same thing, the quality of the lesson increases due to the lower student-teacher ratio.
This co-teaching model can be perfect for times when teachers want more students participating, or certain students are having behavior issues when in a lesson together. The smaller class size also just makes the atmosphere feel more intimate and personal rather than a lecture, it helps class feel like a discussion.
In a lesson of 20 students, the large class size is going to prevent all but the most outspoken from participating and answering questions. Additionally, in two smaller groups of 10, students are more likely to be less embarrassed to ask questions when they do not understand something.
While it requires both teachers to be content experts, this approach can also make rowdy classes feel much more under control. It tends to be easier for one teacher to manage a group of 10 than it is for two to manage a group of 20.
In this approach, teachers will also have to plan mindful time to get together and debrief since their lessons are so separate. Both sets of students need to get the same learning done when parallel teaching so the more parallel teaching that is done, the more meetings teachers are scheduling for themselves to ensure their lesson plans do not slowly drift apart.
- Team Teaching
Team teaching is the most complicated but often the most effective way for many parts of class to be run. In team teaching, both teachers are running the lesson as equals bouncing off the other and adding or clarifying when necessary.
The team teaching co-teaching model requires both teachers to be very comfortable with one another to not have disagreements or hurt feelings arise. It can be easy for teachers to trip over one another, figuratively and sometimes literally, and so this approach is often best implemented slowly and naturally over time.
While these challenges might make team teaching sound like it is not worth the effort, the benefits greatly outweigh the challenges of the co-teaching model. In team teaching, teachers can give all students the benefit of their personal expertise at all times rather than only for a portion of the class.
Lectures can be even more of a discussion when students and both teachers all engage in a topic simultaneously. Additionally, when teachers disagree on a topic or want to highlight a strength or weakness in a perspective being discussed, the two professionals can model how to disagree in a civil manner and often benefit from the differing perspectives.
When students see how to discuss and approach topics in a class from multiple viewpoints they benefit, but when they see how to navigate difficult problems in a professional way, they are learning something that will help them long after graduation. This is the most important benefit of the team teaching co-teaching model.
Research on Co-teaching Models for Special Education
Research on co-teaching models for special education can be difficult to come across as “(v)ariance in teachers, students, quality of instruction, and types of co-teaching make it challenging to meet criteria for quality group experimental study,” In other words, co-teaching has a lot of moving parts and these moving parts can easily confound data in research studies.
There is research, however, that shows that co-teaching models are effective in making school less difficult for students with learning disabilities. Co-teaching works well for students with learning difficulties as they often require more individualized time than a single teacher can provide in order to be successful.
One study helped schools across Turkey implement co-teaching models that helped them mainstream their learners with difficulties. (Gurgur and Uzuner) The schools paired one subject area expert with a special education teacher so that the students could benefit from the two areas of expertise and the teachers could work together to solve classroom issues.
Similarly, a case study on a middle school that implemented co-teaching showed how the co-teaching models reduced the achievement gap of their learners with difficulties. (Murphy and Christle) While not a guarantee, these studies show that, given the right care in implementation, co-teaching can be effective in school, especially for learners who are having a hard time keeping up.
Creating Successful Co-Teacher Relationships
One of the most important things for creating successful co-teacher relationships is to reduce the hierarchy between the pair of teachers. Even when regularly utilizing a main teacher, assistant teacher co-teaching model, the most successful teacher teams will not feel like there is one “boss” and one “helper”.
As mentioned above, being the assistant teacher is oftentimes actually the more difficult of the two positions since they have to focus on all of the students at once and infer their needs. If the newer teacher is the “main” teacher then they can work on their teaching fundamentals and getting comfortable in the classroom while the more senior teacher keeps class running smoothly and makes observations to help their partner improve.
However, even in pairings with highly uneven experience, if one teacher is always seen as the “boss” they will end up doing a lion’s share of the work and the benefits of a second teacher will be minimal for the cost they incur.
Research actually shows that it is not just inexperienced teachers who get benefits from a co-teaching partnership. A recent study conducted on the benefits of co-teaching found that mentor teachers also gained benefits from their partnership.
“Results indicated that co-teachers experienced meaningful professional growth in areas represented by the following themes: (1) critical reflection, (2) pedagogical renewal, (3) in situ feedback and refining practice and (4) application of learning to leadership roles.” (Karathanos-Aguilar and Ervin-Kassab)
So, co-teaching should not be just seen as a way to get new teachers up to speed before throwing them into a class by themselves, but as a way for both teachers to keep eachother fresh, challenged, and supported in their work. The newer teacher will get the benefits of the stable, experienced teacher to keep class under control while the mentor teacher will get ideas and new perspectives from their colleague who has graduated more recently.
For the students, however, the most successful co-teaching pairings will be of professional equals with different expertises or backgrounds that they can bring to the class. Having two specialists in related disciplines being covered in the course will not only halve the student-teacher ratio, but also provide a wider base of experience for the students.
Good pairings could be, for example, a literature expert and a teacher who focuses more on non-fiction texts like news articles for an English class, or a physics expert and a chemist for a science class. Other opportunities could be pairing a subject teacher with a special education expert, as mentioned above, but also could include pairing an administrator with a teacher for a period of time.
In this second model, the administrator should be clear that they are not there to professionally critique the teacher, but are there to observe, help out, and understand what goes on in the classroom better. Administrators often get criticized for not understanding what it is like in the classroom as they may have been an administrator without any classes for many years.
When schools can not afford full time co-teachers, having administrators co-teach for periods of time with all of their teachers can help build relationships, create understanding of the needs of both groups, and create tighter knit school communities. When joining the classroom as teachers, administrators get to know their students on a non-punitive level, get to see what teachers deal with on a daily basis, and feel less isolated.
Conclusion
Co-teaching models are an effective way to support students, reduce teacher workload, and improve educational outcomes. Choosing the right co-teaching model is less of a single decision, but one that must be made on a daily basis depending on the activity being done and the personalities of the teachers and students involved.
While creating a good pair of teachers can be difficult, the most important thing is the way those teachers treat one another. Rather than one teacher being superior and the other being an assistant, regardless of the model being chosen, both teachers should be seen as equal professionals who can help the other to learn and grow as a teacher.
Co-teaching has the most promising research in supporting students with special needs. Pairing a teacher with a special education teacher is not only a great way to help mainstream students, but also can help mainstream teachers better manage their classrooms with students with unique needs even in classes where they do not have the benefit of a special education co-teacher.
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References
Gurgur, Hasan, and Yildiz Uzuner. “Examining the Implementation of Two CO‐Teaching Models: Team Teaching and Station Teaching.” International Journal of Inclusive Education, vol. 15, no. 6, 2011, pp. 589–610., https://doi.org/10.1080/13603110903265032.
Karathanos-Aguilar, Katya, and Lara Ervin-Kassab. “Co-Teaching as an Opportunity for Mentor Teacher Professional Growth.” International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, vol. 11, no. 3, 2022, pp. 245–261., https://doi.org/10.1108/ijmce-06-2021-0070.
Murphy, Michelle R., and Christine A. Christle. “Co-Teaching for Students with Learning Disabilities: One Middle School’s Journey.” Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth, 2022, pp. 1–10., https://doi.org/10.1080/1045988x.2022.2138250
