Finnish teachers’ views on co-teaching

Co-teaching has become a well-known way of working among Finnish teachers in recent years. Teachers’ collaboration is becoming increasingly important in light of the rising number of diverse students in regular classes. In an ideal co-teaching context, teachers collaborate as equals, recognise and respect each other’s skills and competencies, and strengthen and support each other. In this study, we examine teachers’ views on co-teaching and investigate which background factors explain teachers’ views concerning the benefits and the challenges of co-teaching. The data obtained from Finnish basic education teachers’ (N = 694) responses to an online questionnaire are analysed quantitatively. The results show some differences among the teachers’ views. Subject teachers perceive more challenges in co-teaching than class and special education teachers. Class teachers perceive the fewest challenges. Although teachers are generally interested in co-teaching and some of them co-teach regularly, they also report several barriers to its application. The explanatory factors concerning the differences in teachers’ views are gender, teachers’ co-teaching experiences, the amount of co-teaching per week and working as a class teacher.     

Long-Term Teacher Orchestration of Technology-mediated Collaborative Inquiry

This explorative case study longitudinally examines teacher orchestration of an inquiry learning process in a technology-enhanced elementary classroom. A 13-month investigative study on cultural artifacts was conducted on 32 fourth grade students who progressed to the fifth grade during the project. The activities were mediated and documented using Knowledge Forum, a technology-enhanced collaborative environment. Data were gathered from video recordings of whole-class sessions and the teacher’s reflective diary entries. The coding scheme for the video analysis focused on identifying the various orchestration events, while drawing on theory and data-driven qualitative content analysis. Six types of orchestration events effectively maintained the process during whole-class sessions. These events supported the advancement of knowledge, reflection on inquiry, and pragmatic organization of inquiry. The study also adopted CORTDRA diagrams that highlighted temporal aspects of the orchestration events throughout the project. Knowledge Forum enabled the longitudinal advancement of the project.