School experiences and research were the focus of the co-teaching conference held at Bilbao AS Fabrik
School experiences and research were the focus of the co-teaching conference held at Bilbao AS Fabrik
School experiences and research were the focus of the co-teaching conference held at Bilbao AS Fabrik
Researchers from Mondragon University’s Faculty of Humanities and Education Sciences, Autonomous University of Madrid professor and researcher Marta Sandoval Mena, and representatives from four schools in the Basque Country took part in the conference.
On February 14, the Faculty of Humanities and Education Sciences of Mondragon University held a conference on co-teaching. Researchers both from Mondragon University and from outside the university took part in the conference, which was entitled ‘Co-teaching experiences in teaching-learning processes.’ There was also a round table with representatives from the San Sebastian Jesuit School, the Anoeta Public School, and the Herrikide and Laskorain Schools, both of Tolosa. The event was held at Bilbao AS Fabrik and was attended by 100 teachers.
Faculty of Humanities and Education Sciences professor and researcher Eneritz Garro welcomed the participants, explaining that every year, the conference provides the opportunity “to discuss a topic at length and in depth in the accelerated daily lives of teachers,” and underlining “the importance of a strong relationship between schools and the university.”
Research base
The conference opened with a talk entitled ‘Transforming the classroom: what research on co-teaching tells us’ given by Autonomous University of Madrid professor and researcher Marta Sandoval Mena. First, in her capacity as an expert, she presented various characteristics of co-teaching that have been discussed in the research. She explained that there are many different definitions of the concept of ‘co-teaching,’ but the most widely agreed upon definition in current research is that “processes in which two teachers are involved in planning, teaching situations and evaluation can be considered co-teaching experiences. The two teachers must contribute equally in order for co-teaching to occur.” Sandoval Mena discussed several characteristics that reinforce this definition: “More than two educators working with a single group, openly and in the same space, with shared responsibility for the decisions to be made in the classroom, and with roles and functions that are distributed equally.”
Sandoval Mena also mentioned the difficulties involved in researching co-teaching: “There is a lack of conceptual homogeneity about what ‘co-teaching’ entails and about co-teaching models. There is great variation in quantitative research and there have been few qualitative studies. Furthermore, research may depend on the context, the sample, or the co-teaching structure, which makes it more difficult to obtain homogeneous results.” She also highlighted the difficulties posed by personal factors: “Some students responded that they prefer to have only one teacher in the classroom because they didn’t like the other teacher.”
A forum for sharing experiences
After the lecture, the attendees learned about the experiences of four schools in the Basque Country. The speakers were representatives from the San Sebastian Jesuit School, the Anoeta Public School, and the Herrikide and Laskorain Schools, both of Tolosa.
Alaia Fernandez and Iziar Alvarez from the San Sebastian Jesuit School were the first to describe their school’s experience with co-teaching. They explained that they have implemented co-teaching in Primary Education and that they have transformed the school’s “organization, timetable and curriculum” in order to “adapt them to co-teaching,” and state that the contributions of co-teaching to the educational plan are “notable”: “The connection between the community and the students is deeper, the learning process is more dynamic, and it has led to a stronger sense of community.” Co-teaching has benefits not only for students, but also for teacher development, they add, saying that they have seen “greater professionalism and methodological modernization, greater motivation in teamwork, the effective use of different learning strategies, greater professional growth, more support and greater motivation.”
The Anoeta Public School started thinking about implementing co-teaching experiences in the 2020-2021 academic year. These practices were implemented on a trial basis in the 2022-2023 school year and are currently being expanded. When creating teacher pairs, the age and experience of the teachers are taken into account, as are their knowledge of the project, their gender and their profile; an assessment is carried out at the end of the school year. They work at different paces in Early Childhood Education and Primary Education, depending on the characteristics of the school, but the school’s goal is to continue to “delve into” co-teaching, among other things because “it facilitates collaboration and substitutions, facilitates transformation, involves mutual learning... and gives the students more teachers to turn to.”
Before the workshop portion of the conference, the participants also learned about the situation of Compulsory Secondary Education. The director of Secondary Education at the Laskorain School in Tolosa, Ainhoa Artolazabal, explained that they had their first co-teaching experiences in response to a specific need in Physical Education, “without realizing” that that was what they were doing. However, as they delve deeper into the topic, they have been implementing the model, and co-teaching has now been implemented in projects for the first cycle of Compulsory Secondary Education. Mikel Aseginolaza, director of the Herrikide School in Tolosa, reported on their experience of Compulsory Secondary Education: “When students move from Primary Education to Secondary Education, they also change buildings, and we wanted to take advantage of that to change the way we do things as well. We implemented the ‘Bizi’ project in the first cycle, and students from all three levels work together in the same classroom, with three teachers.” According to Aseginolaza, co-teaching provides “more opportunities to provide individual or group support,” is a tool for “more appropriate attention to inclusion and diversity,” involves a “greater” presence of the instructor in the classroom, provides “more references” for the students, and gives teachers the opportunity to “learn from each other.”
Co-teaching: methodological innovation
Among the methodological and pedagogical innovations that are taking place in education, co-teaching is one of the elements that has recently been taking on greater prominence. The main objective of co-teaching is for two or more teachers to work together in the design, refinement and evaluation of teaching-learning processes. Co-teaching allows teachers with different skills, areas or knowledge, and experiences to collaborate in the classroom, and it can be a key element in promoting the area-based learning experiences by area that are part of the new curriculum in the Basque Autonomous Community. Having teachers from different fields collaborating in the classroom provides students the opportunity to have a more enriching experience. Co-teaching experiences in the classroom help provide personalized attention to student diversity and different learning styles.
