team teaching vs. behind closed doors

Jay Lemke (jllbc who-is-at cunyvm.cuny.edu)
Fri, 07 Nov 1997 18:29:20 -0500

Just a note to say Amen! to the benefits of team or co- teaching
experiences as providing a ZPD for the teachers as well as the students!

And, yes, as others have noted here, it is the _differences_ between
disciplines, assumptions, working methods, etc. that provide the most
fruitful learning opportunities for the co-teachers -- as well as for the
students. One of the best ways I know to encourage students to think
independently and contribute their own ideas to a discussion is for them to
see two teacherly authority figures disagreeing with each other, or at
least opening up a space for divergent viewpoints on a subject.

BUT ... this utopia is not often found; why?

The principal obstacles to successful team teaching, in my experience, are
(1) personality incompatibilities between prospective team members, and (2)
personal or professional insecurities on the part of prospective team members.

At one time my department had a very high percentage of all courses team
taught by two's and three's of full-time faculty. It was very expensive the
way we did it; today we have a small amount of inter-visitation of faculty
to one another's classes, by invitation, and some teaming between full and
part-time faculty (with the full-time faculty member more or less 'in
charge').

Many teachers feel a strong sense of 'ownership' and or 'responsibility'
for their classes; they don't like to share. They claim that unclear lines
of authority and responsibility in team-taught situations lead to less than
full efforts from teachers and opportunities to divide-and-conquer for
students. (This is a transport of the two-parent family authority model and
its problems, I think.)

Some personalities and teaching styles are SO divergent that they clash
rather than complement. This does not lead to a positive ZPD, but perhaps
to a negative one: everyone learns less, nor more. I suppose this also
raises some general questions about the conditions for success of the ZPD
model: it is not enough that one partner be more competent at the task;
there must also be the potential for a certain kind of personal relation
between the partners as a foundation for the 'scaffolding' and learning, or
conversation.

Finally, and most seriously, many teachers prefer to work behind closed
doors because they are not particularly proud of the job they are doing.
They are not seeking privacy to insulate their creative teaching from
conformist surveillance; they are shunning scrutiny of their short-comings,
real or imagined. The lack of good educational conditions in these closed
classrooms may not be entirely the fault of the teacher. I was recently
appalled at the high percentage of teachers required to teach courses
entirely outside their fields of study, in secondary education, even in
states with good educational reputations (see latest National Education
Goals Panel Progress Report, 1997, at www.negp.gov). And we also know about
classes that are too large, schools that have no systematic means of
insulating students who want to learn and teachers who want to teach from
those students who want neither, and the unprofessional practice of putting
the least experienced teachers into the most difficult to teach classes.
(How often do the media highlight these administrative abuses, which are as
much to blame for poor U.S. educational performance as any weakness in the
knowledge and skills of teachers? and a lot easier to fix, with MONEY,
which conservative 'research' has proven makes no difference to educational
quality ...)

Maybe it is time to open the classroom door. JAY.

---------------------------
JAY L. LEMKE

CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
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