Partner Teaching: A Promising Model.

Introduction Urban schools continue to exhibit lower student achievement than national expectations and norms. Various programs such as smaller classrooms, co-teaching or partner teaching have been implemented in elementary schools to reduce the number of children assigned to one teacher and foster more teacher-student involvement and teacher support for learning (Biddle & Berliner, 2002). This ethnographic case study presents findings from a study of a co-teaching or partner-teaching Kindergarten classroom in a large, very poor, urban district. The predominately African American students (28 out of 30) displayed above average readings scores as compared to their peers in 7 other Kindergarten classrooms in the same district. High teacher collegiality among the partner or co-teachers was evident. However, several troubling findings surfaced. These included: lack of critical reflection among the partner teachers, lack of instructional leadership to support the partner-teaching relationship, and the inability of the white teachers to understand dynamics of race in their relationships with parents. These findings support the existing notion that classroom models in which teachers work together rather than in isolated settings to serve students who are at risk for academic failure hold promise for higher student achievement. Moreover, appropriate support from administrators and relevant education is essential in order to help white teachers understand the challenges of negotiating race differences in becoming more culturally competent in urban schools. Purpose and Structures of Partner Teacher or Co-Teaching Classrooms The literature contains descriptions of various structures or versions of team teaching, co-teaching, or partner-teaching that have existed in K -12 settings for many years (Cunningham, 1960, Cuban, 1993, Browne & Evans, 1994, Lee & Smith, 1996, Bishop & Stevenson (2000), Flowers, Mertens, & Mulhall, 2000, Musanti & Pence, 2010). Team teaching, co-teaching, collaborative teaming and partner-teaching are some of the terms associated with the practice of teachers working together with the same group of children in common settings. Interest in various approaches to these teacher arrangements is widely evident and ample professional literature which advocates for and describes procedures for developing, implementing and sustaining collaborative teacher arrangements exists (Hough & Irving, 1997; Lee & Smith, 1996; McCracken & Sekicky, 1998). These practices most often occur in elementary classrooms and middle school programs (Bishop & Stevenson, 2000; Flowers, Mertens, & Mulhall, 1999, 2000; Tonso & Jung, 2006), although more recently, such arrangements are increasing in secondary classrooms (Roth, Tobin, Carambo & Dalland, 2004; Eick & Ware, 2005: Eick, Ware & Jones, 2004) and in university classes, particularly in programs for pre-service teachers (Robinson & Schaible, 1995; Scantlebury, K., Gallo-Fox, J. & B. Wassell, 2008). The purposes of these arrangements vary. They have been increasingly sought and utilized in programs that require the shared expertise of regular and special education teachers when children with disabilities are placed into general education classrooms (Rice, Drame, Owens & Frattura, 2007; Blanton, Grifftin, Winn, & Pugach, 1997; Dettmer, Thurston, & Dyck, 2005; Pugach & Johnson, 1995; Gleason, Fennemore, & Scantlebury, 2006; Kluth & Straut, 2003). Co-teaching or partner-teaching has been documented in programs aimed at creating smaller teacher-student ratios in large classrooms in urban schools. In these programs, larger numbers of children are placed into classrooms with two teachers when facilities do not permit separate smaller classrooms (Graue, Hatch, Rao, & Oen, 2007). In other cases, team teaching occurs when new or apprentice teachers can benefit from the extended pedagogical expertise of veteran teachers (Eick, 2004; Eick, Ware & Jones, 2004; Scantlebury, Gallo-Fox, & Wassell, 2008) or when experienced teachers with different areas of expertise share their content knowledge with teachers less knowledgeable in those areas (Murphy, Beggs, Carlisle & Greenwood, 2004). …