Abstract

This book provides a concise and comprehensive overview of the practice of coteaching, including its benefits and educational and social implications. Coteaching plays an important role in enhancing the experience and effectiveness of pre-service and in-service teachers during school experience at a time when teacher retention rates are a concern both nationally and internationally. Traditional practice in school experience, generally comprising observation followed by complete take-over of classes, has not altered in more than a century, despite significant changes in the role of the teacher, the needs of students, the learning environment and the functioning of schools. Coteaching provides a pedagogy which supports pre-service teachers more actively and promotes teacher professional development, as they work together in co-planning, co-practice and co-evaluating lessons during school-based experience. 

Co-teaching in Teacher Education is part of the successful Critical Guides for Teacher Educators series edited by Ian Menter.

The text offers a valuable overview of how to work with new practitioners and support their practice with a coteaching approach. It clearly defines what coteaching is, what coteaching looks like within the classroom context and how it differs from other forms of collaborative teaching, and the theoretical basis of coteaching. It offers a wide range of tested and helpful solutions to work with others and developing trainees’ in practice, and is underpinned by detailed research. It offers a clear advice and guidance and useful models of practice which can be used in a range of contexts. A very thought provoking and insightful read, which really changes your thinking about how you can approach school-based teacher training and vary the activities, strategies and techniques you use to make the most of your trainees’ talents. Succinct and very clear.

Colette Murphy is a professor of science and mathematics education at the School of Education, Trinity College, Dublin. She has been a teacher educator for more than 25 years and has published two books and many articles on improving the experience of pre-service teachers in schools. Her research centres on science learning and teaching at all levels, and she is well known for her work on coteaching in initial teacher education.

Ian Menter (AcSS) is Professor of Teacher Education and Director of Professional Programmes in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford.  He previously worked at the Universities of Glasgow, the West of Scotland, London Metropolitan, the West of England and Gloucestershire.  Before that he was a primary school teacher in Bristol, England.  His most recent publications include A Literature Review on Teacher Education for the 21^st Century (Scottish Government) and A Guide to Practitioner Research in Education (Sage).  His work has also been published in many academic journals.