L ELAORBNAI LN C G GI T I Z E N S H I P LEARNING
COLLABORATION AND CO-TEACHING FOR SUCCESSFUL LEARNING By Nicola Crompton, Senior Teacher – Leader of Student Support Services and Claire Myers, Assistant Leader of Learning, Language Acquisition
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s a non-selective school, and one which values diversity and inclusion, we treat all students as individuals, recognising they each possess different strengths, as well as areas for growth. Students have different needs at different times, with some needing more or additional support to be successful learners. Within the Primary School, we have a combined team of specialists, including counsellors, EAL instructors and teachers, Learning Support Teachers, including support for those who excel academically, and a Speech and Language Therapist. They work with their teaching colleagues to meet the diverse language, social and emotional and academic needs of our students. One of the ways in which we achieve this is to practice collaborative teaching, also known as co-teaching, throughout the Primary School. This is where the adult support from a specialist teacher is taken, whenever possible, into the classroom and where the students are supported alongside their peers. What is collaborative teaching? Collaborative teaching involves a specialist teacher or instructor and a class teacher co-planning and co-delivering the 16
• Bangkok Patana School
teaching instruction and taking shared responsibility for all students’ learning. Why do we advocate for collaborative teaching? We have seen the positive impact for both staff and students. When teachers share their experience, knowledge and skills there is significant potential for professional growth and upskilling of teaching practice. Students benefit from more direct adult attention, interaction and feedback when there are two or more members of staff working within a lesson. Practising key skills, knowledge or language within their classroom supports contextualisation of skills. There are benefits to teachers having a slightly different expertise and key intentions in the lesson. For example, the class teacher may be focusing on teaching specific scientific content and the other on reinforcing scientific language. A great deal of research validates our own observational evidence. In 2016, Professor John Hattie found ‘collective teacher efficacy’ (the shared belief by school staff that they can achieve more by working together and sharing expertise) to be the most effective strategy for increasing student achievement. Earlier, in 2014, Linda Darling-Hammond and Dion Burns
