what is a team teaching ....????????

Teaming To Teach: Operational Definitions
Team teaching can be defined as a group of two or more teachers working together to plan, conduct and evaluate the learning activities for the same group of learners. Quinn and Kanter (1984) define team teaching as "simply team work between two qualified instructors who, together, make presentations to an audience." There appear to be two broad categories of team teaching:
• Category A: Two or more instructors are teaching the same students at the same time within the same classroom;
• Category B: The instructors work together but do not necessarily teach the same groups of students nor necessarily teach at the same time.
When instructors team teach the same group of students at the same time (Category A), there are a number of different roles that these team teachers might perform. For monetary and spatial reasons, this type of team teaching usually involves two partners. Six models of team teaching have been identified by Maroney (1995) and Robinson and Schaible (1995). Category A team teaching usually involves a combination of these models according to the personalities, philosophies or strengths of the team teachers as well as the personalities and strengths of the learners.
• Traditional Team Teaching: In this case, the teachers actively share the instruction of content and skills to all students. For example, one teacher may present the new material to the students while the other teacher constructs a concept map on the overhead projector as the students listen to the presenting teacher.
• Collaborative Teaching: This academic experience describes a traditional team teaching situation in which the team teachers work together in designing the course and teach the material not by the usual monologue, but rather by exchanging and discussing ideas and theories in front of the learners. Not only do the team teachers work together, but the course itself uses group learning techniques for the learners, such as small-group work, student-led discussion and joint test-taking
• Complimentary / Supportive Team Teaching: This situation occurs when one teacher is responsible for teaching the content to the students, while the other teacher takes charge of providing follow-up activities on related topics or on study skills.
• Parallel Instruction: In this setting, the class is divided into two groups and each teacher is responsible for teaching the same material to her/his smaller group. This model is usually used in conjunction with other forms of team teaching, and is ideally suited to the situation when students are involved in projects or problem-solving activities, as the instructor can roam and give students individualized support.
• Differentiated Split Class: This type of teaching involves dividing the class into smaller groups according to learning needs. Each educator provides the respective group with the instruction required to meet their learning needs. For example, a class may be divided into those learners who grasp adding fractions and those who need more practice with the addition of fractions. One teacher would challenge the learners who grasped the concept more quickly, while the second teacher would likely review or re-teach those students who require further instruction.
• Monitoring Teacher: This situation occurs when one teacher assumes the responsibility for instructing the entire class, while the other teacher circulates the room and monitors student understanding and behaviour.
Category B team teaching consists of a variety of team teaching models, in which the instructors work together but do not necessarily teach the same groups of students, or if they do, they do not teach these students at the same time. This category of team teaching can take many forms:
• Team members meet to share ideas and resources but function independently. An example arose during the Master of Teaching (MT) lecture series on November 9th, 1999, when five recent MT graduates shared their experiences after 50 days on the job. Although these teachers were not teaching in the same class, they participated in daily meetings, ongoing discussions and planned their curriculum together. A recent article in Mathematics Teacher (Rumsey, 1999) describes cooperative teaching in which instructors share teaching ideas and resources but otherwise teach independently. This version of cooperative teaching entails weekly meetings and a teaching-resource notebook. The goals of the weekly meetings are to discuss the concepts to be covered during the following week of classes, to present ways of teaching and assessing these concepts, and to share new ideas among teachers. The resource notebook is a comprehensive collection of teachers� best ideas that are ready to implement and use.
• Teams of teachers sharing a common resource center. In this form, teachers instruct classes independently, but share resource materials such as lesson plans, supplementary textbooks and exercise problems.
• A team in which members share a common group of students, share the planning for instruction but teach different sub-groups within the whole group. This appears similar to the way in which the Master of Teaching program is operated. The various professors share a common group, or cadre, but teach separate sub-groups of this cadre.
• One individual plans the instructional activities for the entire team. This model does not take full advantage of the team concept as only one individual's ideas are incorporated. Sometimes, due to time or financial constraints, there may be no alternative to one person designing the entire program.
• The team members share planning, but each instructor teaches his/her own specialized skills area to the whole group of students. An example would be seven instructors teaching the seven different topics in Mathematics 30 to seven different classes and rotating throughout the duration of the course.