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In times of increasing (linguistic) diversity in foreign language classrooms, calls for more and more intense teacher collaboration, especially in the form of co-teaching, are becoming louder. Despite some plausible empirical evidence of the beneficial effects of co-teaching on both students and teachers, co-teaching hardly ever happens in everyday life at school. University students, who are usually well-trained in and open towards teamwork, are often disappointed when they enter schools and notice that ‘lone strangers’ instead of ‘dream teams’ tend to prevail.
In this seminar, we are going to explore the pedagogical potential of teacher collaboration in the EFL classroom. Based on the existing research literature, we will deal with beneficial and hindering factors for teacher collaboration and with its impact on processes of foreign language teaching and learning. Besides, participants will be expected to plan and conduct a small-scale empirical study investigating issues such as attitudes and beliefs towards collaborative teaching, instructional strategies for co-teaching or communicative patterns in the co-taught EFL classroom. Data may be collected through classroom observations, interviews with teachers or students or through reflecting one’s own attempts in co-teaching. This will require a certain amount of flexibility in the participants' summer term schedules. |
