Co-Teaching Strategies for High School Social Studies Classes

Introduction to Co-Teaching

Since the U.S. government enacted the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in 2001, schools across the United States have been searching for quality educational delivery options that provide high-quality instruction. Co-teaching has been identified as an effective teaching delivery model that meets this need. Co-teaching is a strategy in which two or more people share responsibility for delivering instruction to students. In other words, co-teaching involves distributing teaching responsibilities between two teachers, including planning, evaluation, and instruction within a shared teaching environment.

Co-teaching is an instructional arrangement in which a special education teacher and a general education teacher deliver both specialized and core instruction to a diverse group of students within a single classroom. Co-teaching requires educators to make joint instructional decisions and share responsibilities for student learning. One benefit of co-teaching is that it reduces stigma for special-needs students while increasing respect and understanding for them. Moreover, co-teaching improves the sense of heterogeneous classroom community. In a co-teaching environment, the instructional fragmentation that often occurs in other delivery models is minimized, and all students — including academically talented students, students with average ability, and students at risk of school failure — receive improved instruction. Special education co-teachers and service providers also gain a better understanding of expectations for both student behavior and academics.

This study develops a research objective to enhance greater understanding of an appropriate co-teaching approach for the high school social studies classroom.

Research Objective

To identify, in a positive and practical way, the co-teaching strategies that will work in a high school social studies class.

Research Organization

The project is organized into six chapters. Chapter 1 provides the introduction, research objective, and research questions. Chapter 2 discusses previous studies reviewing the overview of co-teaching models and the different types of co-teaching models used in high schools. Chapter 3 presents the research methodology, including the methods of data collection and analysis. Chapter 4 presents the results, which identify Parallel Teaching as the best co-teaching method for high schools. Chapter 5 presents the discussion, summarizing the results. Chapter 6 provides the conclusion.

Rationale for Choosing the Study

A major reason for choosing the co-teaching approach is the challenges the researcher faces when carrying out sole teaching responsibilities. The traditional solo teaching approach places all teaching and planning responsibilities on one teacher. Typically, this approach has been characterized as a "takeover" classroom model because the teacher assumes all activities and all classroom responsibilities (Bacharach, Heck, & Dahlberg, 2010; Badiali & Titus, 2010).

At the national level, the NCLB model is unwilling to accept the traditional sole teaching approach because it fails to prepare students for collaborative practice (Darragh, Picanco, Tully, & Henning, 2011). Another problem with the traditional teaching approach is its inability to foster teacher–student development within school timelines. The researcher therefore identified co-teaching as a strategy that fosters an effective teaching environment. Since the 1970s, collaboration has become a popular approach for delivering quality instruction to students. One primary benefit of the co-teaching approach is that it reduces the teacher-to-student ratio, which helps teachers concentrate more effectively on individual students. Co-teaching also enables teachers to share their expertise, work collaboratively, and enhance the learning environment. Furthermore, co-teaching strategy requires participating teachers to jointly engage in decision-making, teaching, planning, and student assessment. Co-teaching has emerged as a promising and effective instructional strategy for K–12 students (Bacharach, Heck, & Dahlberg, 2010; Roth & Tobin, 2001).

Despite the benefits students derive from co-teaching environments, different co-teaching models exist, including Parallel Teaching, One Teach One Support, Station Teaching, Team Teaching, One Teach One Observe, and Alternative Teaching. However, a co-teaching model appropriate for social studies may not be appropriate for science subjects. Moreover, previous literature on co-teaching has focused more on the roles of co-teachers than on the impact of co-teaching on student learning outcomes (Friend, Cook, Hurley-Chamberlain, & Shamberger, 2010). This study attempts to address that gap by investigating which co-teaching strategy works best for social studies classes in high school.

Research Question

What co-teaching strategies will work in the high school social studies classroom environment to support positive learning outcomes?