AN OVERVIEW OF COLLABORATIVE TEACHING

Azura Mohd Noor, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Accountancy, Universiti Teknologi MARA Cawangan Perlis.

Sahl bin Mu’adh bin Anas transmitted from his father what the Prophet said:

“Whoever teaches some knowledge will have the reward of the one who acts upon it, without it diminishing his reward in the least.”

Sunan Ibn Majah, Vol. 1, Book 1, Hadith 240

 

In Islam and other religions, as mentioned in the hadith above, the one who imparts useful knowledge to others is respected and placed on a higher level. Although they teach students to enhance their learning outcomes and perform well, educators should also get satisfaction from the works they do. Job satisfaction is defined as an employee's perception of whether their job is producing the results, they consider important and how well the result meets or exceeds the expectations (Mala & Kannan, 2022). Any job, at any level and in any workplace, can be very stressful if the workload is not managed well. Educators' job satisfaction is no exception. The concept of collaborative teaching is believed to have a positive impact on educators as it can reduce their workload and increase their satisfaction with teaching by sharing tasks and expertise with other educators.

 

Collaborative teaching is also known as cooperative teaching or team teaching. It is a teaching method in which two or more educators teach, instruct and supervise the same group of students together. Baeten & Simons (2014) refer to team teaching as “two or more teachers working together at some level in planning, teaching, and/or assessing of a course”. In addition, a recent study focused on co-teaching, which can be described as two or more educators working together to share the workload, i.e. planning, delivering, and assessing lessons (Eriksson et al., 2020). The study found that educators who collaborated and learned from each other improved student outcome more effectively than those who worked alone (Anwar et al, 2021; Simons, Baeten, & Vanhees, 2020; Ari, & Ciftci, 2022).

Nowadays, different types of models of collaborative teaching can be adopted (see Table 1). Based on different definitions of collaborative teaching, it can be said that the minimum requirements for each of the models require at least two educators sharing the same common content of the lesson plan (Baeten & Simons, 2014; Eriksson et al, 2020; Maolida & Sofarini, 2022). However, teaching styles, roles of educators, and the way knowledge and embedded skills are delivered to students vary depending on the model chosen. Baeten & Simons (2014) have identified 5 models for collaborative or team teaching, as shown in Table 1.

Collaborative teaching is an example of how the teaching approach should be carried out in today’s teaching and learning environment, for the benefit of millions of people. The benefits are not only that students can improve their knowledge and learning skills, but also that they can experience different teaching methods from both educators during collaborative teaching in practice. They become unwritten guidelines when they later have to work together with their colleagues in their own jobs. In addition, collaborative teaching enables educators to impart knowledge to a wide range of students by using methods that stimulate students’ imagination while supporting individual learning differences. 

In summary, collaborative teaching is an accessible and powerful tool for educators to improve student learning outcomes and share their workload. Depending on educators' expectations of teaching and learning outcomes, students' learning styles and available teaching learning facilities and environments, different models of collaborative teaching can be chosen, such as lead-observe, coaching, assist model, parallel teaching, teaming model, etc. Effective application of collaborative teaching can not only satisfy students and produce fruitful results, but educators and communities can also benefit from this teaching approach.

References

Anwar, K., Asari, S., Husniah, R., & Asmara, C. H. (2021). Students' perceptions of collaborative team teaching and student achievement motivation. International Journal of Instruction, 14(1), 325-344.

Ari, S., & Ciftci, S. (2022). Action research on the use of collaborative teaching techniques. Journal of Qualitative Research in Education, 29, 78-110.

Baeten, M., & Simons, M. (2014). Student teachers’ team teaching: Models, effects, and conditions for implementation. Teaching and Teacher Education, 41, 92-110.

Eriksson, T., Jaskari, M.-M., & Kinnunen, P. (2020). Co-teaching is great! – But only if there is time: Teacher perspectives on online co-teaching. Nordic Journal of Business, 69(3), 47–69.

Mala, P., & Kannan, T. (2022). Job satisfaction of women teachers working in government and private colleges. Journal of Positive School Psychology, 6(3), 7557-7561.

Maolida, E. H., & Sofarini, A. (2022). Go hand in hand: Showcasing lecturers’ online collaborative teaching practices. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 11(3), 533 – 566.

Simons, M., Baeten, M., & Vanhees, C. (2020). Team teaching during field experiences in teacher education: Investigating student teachers’ experiences with parallel and sequential teaching. Journal of teacher education, 71(1), 24-40.