Browsing by Subject "co-teaching"
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(2018)Goals. Along inclusive thinking ever more students’ equality and participation has been higlighted in Finnish education system. Finland like numerous other countries has signed many international agreements, such as Salamanca statement and United Nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilites. The development of education according to these agreements has been exposed in many public records in last decades. Variable school culture sets new challenges to teachers and above all requires collaboration between teachers. Co-teaching is one way to react to the challenges of school culture. Goal of this study is to set co-teaching into larger context and investigate what kind of meanings class teachers give to co-teaching and how they react to co-teaching. The purpose of this study is in co-teaching between special education teacher and class teacher. Methods. This research is qualitative research. Research material has been obtained by interviewing three elementary school teachers in Oulu area. Interviews were carried out as theme interviews. The duration of interviews varied between 25 minutes to 45 minutes. The material has been analyzed with qualitative content analysis. Results and conclusions. In this study class teachers’ attitude for co-teaching was found positive. They saw co-teaching to be compatible with inclusive teaching. Teachers emphasized the role of pedagogical leadership in executing the co-teaching. School’s pedagogical administration can support co-teaching by structural arrangements, changing the working culture and by increasing awareness of co-teaching. Co-teaching also caused contradictions. The teachers saw, that disagreements were induced by division of roles as well as interactional contradictions. Conflicts were mainly clarified by discussing. The key points of solving contradictions had been changing the way of acting, self-improvement and support from principal.
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(2011)Teachers work is changing from independent work towards a collegial cooperation, and one form of cooperation can be co-teaching. Co-teaching is also discussed in the three level model of supporting in Special education strategy (Ministry of Education 2007). Efforts have been made to increase co-teaching in Helsinki with the help of a merit pay system. The purpose of this study is to describe teachers' roles in planning, implementing and evaluating co-teaching and to resolve how teachers have ended up with these roles, what advantages and disadvantages there are in different roles and what kind of roles are experienced meaningful. This study is made from a class teacher or a special class teacher point of view. The research material was collected using a qualitative web-inquiry in Autumn 2010. The questionnaire was answered by 35 teachers. The material was studied using content analysis methods. Three different co-teaching roles were formed on the basis of the research material. These roles differ in the way of dividing responsibility of planning and implementing co-teaching. Responsibility Sharers divided the responsibility evenly, Primary Responsible had one teacher with main responsibility and Single Responsible had only one teacher having all the responsibility of planning and teaching. The more responsibility the class teacher had, the more the special education teacher was limited to answer for students with special needs. Distribution of work with Responsibility Sharers was mostly based on good cooperation, while Primary Responsible and Single Responsible had work distribution mostly affected by absence of common planning time. The most satisfied with their co-teaching roles were the Responsibility Sharers, while the Single Responsible were the most unhappy group. However, it seems that individuals' persona affects to what kind of co-teaching was experienced meaningful.
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(2013)Aim of the study. Traditionally teaching has been lonely work. Demands for towards teaching has been increased during the last decade: need for special education is growing, the contents of the curriculum has grown and there are also new challenges in the co-operation between school and families. Finnish students rank well in international comparison, but feel less comfortable at school. Teachers are tiring themselves out and choose other professions. Lack of resources does not allow smaller class sizes or more input in special education. Interest in a collegial collaboration between teachers has been suggested as a solution. The idea of inclusion and the changing law of special education stating that all pupils would attend the same classes are in the background. Co-teaching aims at avoiding extra special education by using existing resources, by combining two classes and with collaboration of teachers. The aim of the study is to find out the characteristics of co-teaching with two teachers and its added value to the teaching work. Methods. Eight pairs of co-teachers were interviewed, five of them co-teaching full time and in three cases the other teacher joining the class only for certain lessons. Research type was qualitative multi-case study. The study material was collected by observing the classes and by interviewing the pairs. The observations were reported as narratives describing the co-teaching of each teacher pair. The interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis, which was steered by the theory and the collected material. Results and conclusions. According to this study co-teaching was considered as a means to enhance quality of teaching, reduce teachers' work load, increase professionality, and to increase the motivation of pupils. Nineteen different forms of co-teaching were formulated based on the literature and the material collected at observations and interviews. These forms may be useful in better recognizing the individual needs of pupils and to better use the presence and experience of two teachers. As a conclusion, the didactic triangle was extended to form a didactic-collegial square, where the collegial relationship between the two teachers brings a new dimension to the picture reflecting the many dimensions of co-teaching and difference to the work of a teacher alone.
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