Team Teaching in a Bilingual School: An Exploration of Teachers’ Interpersonal Aspects and Student Classroom Interaction

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to explore the teachers’ interpersonal aspects of team teaching in a bilingual program and to examine whether “team teaching” increases classroom interaction. The data was collected during course preparation and classroom instruction through classroom observations and individual semi-structured interviews. The participants were provided from the school and taught in English by selecting the same loading cognitive subjects to avoid the problems of difficult learning content. The participants were two pairs; pair one consisted of one native English-speaking teacher (NEST) and one non-native English-speaking teacher (NNEST), pair two consisted of two non-natives English-speaking teachers (NNEST). The findings indicated that the “Team Teaching” model was not the only advantage for the students and teamwork but the teacher's interpersonal aspects showed that when they had no choice to choose their team, and they might feel uncomfortable. The different cultures (Logistical), attitudes (Interpersonal), and teaching styles (Pedagogical) also made them felt uneasy to work in teams. Comparing two teams of the study, team consisting of two non-native English-speaking teachers built a better relationship than the other team. It was combined with gender factors, culture, teaching style, language barrier, communication, and attitude. It is obvious that pairing teachers is not an easy job. School administrator should consider various factors in order to help the team work effectively and successfully. They expressed feelings of working as a team through various factors. Therefore, the results of this study indicate that a good team should follow the model type as “Team Teaching”. Keywords: Team teaching, Pedagogical, Bilingual Education, Interpersonal, Classroom interaction DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-33-15 Publication date: November 30 th 2020