What Is Shared Teaching?

Today’s teachers have a duty to teach their students in an effective and innovative way. One strategy to achieve this is by putting shared teaching into practice.

The school should be a place of exchange and collaboration in which some learn from each other together. In this sense, it is important that teachers work as a team putting into practice innovative strategies such as shared teaching.

This educational method is far from those used in the traditional teaching system, in which each teacher takes care of a group of students in an individualized way, without the support or advice of other teachers.

But, currently, teachers must abandon this thought and change it for one in which dialogue, inclusion and mutual respect prevail.

What is shared teaching?

Shared teaching is an educational strategy that consists of putting two teachers working together with the same class. Thus, there are two figures within the classroom:

• The classroom teacher.  He is the main teacher and the person in charge of the subject.
• The support teacher.  It can be a teacher responsible for the attention to diversity or any teacher willing to perform the function of helping in the classroom.
  

Between them they are in charge of carrying out the following tasks:

• Share and develop new learning materials and methodologies.
• Offer mutual support to deal with new developments or difficulties in teaching.

Thus, implementing this strategy promotes the existence of greater interaction situations between classmates and between students and teachers. Therefore, an optimal environment is created for the acquisition of academic and emotional knowledge.

Types of shared teaching

According to Teresa Huguet, shared teaching can be divided into three types, depending on the specialty of the teachers involved:

• A specialized teacher (this can be a teacher of therapeutic pedagogy (PT), one of special education or a psychopedagogue) is introduced into the classroom to support students with special educational needs. And, in addition, he advises the main teacher in his teaching method.
• Two teachers of the same subject teach together in a classroom,  so that they put into practice a participatory methodology and offer greater attention to the students.
• Other professionals, not necessarily teachers, enter the classroom to support students and teachers.

In these three cases, the procedure and operation of shared teaching is based on:

• Coordination.
• Communication.
• Planning.

All of this allows students to be offered teaching that facilitates and encourages learning.

Tips to put this educational strategy into practice

To put shared teaching into practice, one must be open to dialogue,  since this strategy requires establishing conversations about:

• What happens at a certain moment in the classroom.
• What different students do in class and their learning difficulties.
• The helps that can be offered.
• The forms of support used.
• The teaching styles and models used.
  

It is also important that teachers are willing to interact and make commitments. In addition, it is convenient:

• Determine basic structures and clearly define the functions and roles of each teacher.
• Plan the sessions (what is going to be done and how it is going to be done) to stimulate shared teaching.

• Make a subsequent assessment and forecast of changes that they believe it is convenient to introduce in the classroom.

This teaching method favors all students, since they are offered help in various areas, both those who need it occasionally and those who need it constantly. Thus, students with special needs benefit from the fact of not being forced to leave the classroom to receive educational reinforcement, being able to stay all day with their classmates.