Assisting. Reconstructing a Cooperation Pattern on a Video Basis among Co-teachers in the Programme Jedem Kind ein Instrument

Abstract

The programme “Jedem Kind ein Instrument”1 (JeKi) in Germany demands the cooperation between primary school and music school teachers, working in teams of two for one lesson each week during the first year of school to offer basic musical training and to present various musical instruments. The ideal that the teachers’ skills complement each other is guiding the programme but preliminary results from a study on JeKi showed that there is hardly any coordination prior to co-taught classes, mostly due to a lack of time. This leads to the relevant research question concerning how teachers collaborate for co-classes when the very requirements for successful collaboration, i.e., coordination and communication, are mostly missing, but co-teaching still takes place, albeit sporadically. In order to address this desideratum, this video study tries to reconstruct an interactional framing of assistance as the predominantly found model of cooperation between music teachers from different professional backgrounds.2