Two is better than one? A case study of co-teaching in a transnational university in China

Abstract

This article investigates co-teaching in a foundation year of a Sino-Foreign Cooperative University in China with the purpose to explore how co-teaching can manifest and benefit learners in such a setting. The research, taking the form of an exploratory case study, spans four academic years and is based on data from seminars and lecture recordings along with responses from teachers and students. The authors’ experiences also contributed to the findings in the form of an autoethnographic account. Co-teaching is shown to take several forms, from complex team teaching to a second teacher assisting. Generally, students felt more engaged, and their instructors observed that language learning in the classroom was facilitated. Findings showed that the interaction between two teachers and its effects in co-teaching can be explained by Bandura’s social learning theory, in that teachers could model social skills by doing rather than prescribing. Teacher interaction also offered the basis for staging dialogues displaying different perspectives informing students’ development. Relevant to the multicultural environment of the context, co-teaching offered students opportunities to observe the enactment of skills such as thinking critically and intercultural interaction. This study suggests that co-teaching is a promising approach for transnational settings and more research is needed to understand the challenges to its implementation.