Points on a Continuum: ESL Teachers Reporting on Collaboration

Abstract

Today's K–12 English as a second language (ESL) teachers are encouraged to coplan or coteach with content teachers in order to support English language learners, thus moving English language support into the content area classroom, through push‐in or coteaching rather than the pull‐out model. However, results from a questionnaire of 72 K–12 ESL teachers across a wide range of settings suggest that collaboration may or may not take place within any of these models and can best be understood in terms of the intersection of the variables of frequency (limited to extensive) as well as type of practice (formal to informal). Results of this study have implications for administrator professional learning, teacher education, and teacher leadership.

Like Driving From “the Back Seat”: Teaching English as a Second Language in Commodified Curricular Terrains

“…Although the Common Core and resulting coteaching models have created their own set of logistical, interpersonal, and professional challenges for the teachers charged with their implementation, coteaching has generally been lauded as a dismantling of the Mexican room (Gándara & Orfield, ) or ESL ghetto (Valdés, ). However, in order for professional partnerships to be successful, Bell and Baecher () argued for institutional “cultures of collaboration” (p. 504) in which participants feel valued, possess a sense of belonging, receive administrative support, desire positive outcomes, and share in the ownership and responsibility for English learners' progress (see also McClure & Cahnmann‐Taylor, ). Specifically, they noted a need for communal planning time, meaningful professional development, and compatible teaching styles as factors that support collaborative programs.…”

“I Understand the Struggle”: Leveraging the Lived Experiences of African American Teachers in TESOL

“…ADVANCE was a local manifestation of a larger statewide consciousness of the need to support classroom teachers working to create access, equity, and excellence for English learners. Likewise, in North Carolina and beyond, robust discussions have examined the challenges ESL professionals face in their collaborations with classroom teachers (McClure & Cahnmann-Taylor, 2010), their potential marginalization in K-12 institutions (Bell & Baecher, 2012;George, 2009), and the role of university-based teacher education in developing institutional capacity for serving English language learners (Garcia et al, 2010).…”

Collaborative Teaching: How Does It Work in a Graduate TEFL Class?

“…Moreover, social constructivism and its subsequent pedagogical approaches have had a direct bearing on introducing the team teaching approach to other educational fields, including English language teaching (ELT; Shannon & Meath‐Lang, ). Success stories have been reported in various disciplines (Carless, ; Clark et al., ; Fennick & Liddy, ; Popkewitz & Myrdal, ; Preves & Stephenson, ; Stevens, Bott Slaton, & Bunney, ), including ELT (Bell & Baecher, ; Schneider, Huss‐Lederman, & Sherlock, ; Short, Cloud, Morris, & Motta, ; Verplaetse, Ferraro, & Anderberg, ), given that the overall environment and particularly coteachers' synergy are conducive. Thus, a prerequisite for successful collaboration is to have a “good mix.” Teachers need to find a “comfort zone” in the model they acquire (Dove & Honigsfeld, , p. 15) and to be “responsive to the dynamics of individual personalities” (Hoffman & Dahlman, , p. 107).…”

“…Other challenges identified are lack of administrative support, time for planning and substantive collaboration, physical space and resources, preservice or in‐service training, misinformed attitudes toward ELLs and the second language acquisition process, serving multiple schools, unrealistic workloads, and conflicting pedagogies (Bell & Baecher, ; Bell & Walker, ; DelliCarpini, ; Hoffman & Dahlman, ; Sawyer & Rimm‐Kaufman, ).…”