Co-Teaching Co-Development Co-Achievement

In the modern learning environment, co-teaching has become critically important in enhancing ability of learners to grasp concepts taught in class. For a very long time, stakeholders in the learning sector have been struggling to find effective pedagogical methods which would ensure that learners of different capabilities are offered equal learning opportunity. Coteaching is seen as the solution to this problem. This teaching method is also considered very effective in enhancing communication skills, competence, and confidence of the teachers.


Introduction
The concept of co-teaching is increasingly becoming popular in various institutions of learning. According to Sheldon (2012), pressure has been piling on the educators to find a way of ensuring that learners graduate after understanding the course materials in details. However, achieving this objective has been a big challenge for many institutions. In every class, there are quick learners, average students, and the slow learners. Trying to teach at the pace of the slow learners will affect quick and average students. Going with the average students may not be very effective for the slow and quick learners. Of course going at the pace of the quick learners will have adverse effect on the majority of students. The emergence of co-teaching has been highly welcome among the educators and students as one of the best ways of ensuring that all learners are made to understand the course materials in the most effective manner. Friend (2008) defines co-teaching as a system where two or more teachers are assigned the responsibility of teaching the same subject in a given class. These teachers are supposed to share the responsibility of teaching the subject on different days. It means that the co-teachers must sit together and develop a plan on how to address a given subject. For instance, two teachers can be assigned the task of teaching English literature to same class. They are expected to plan on the specific teaching tasks that each of them will handle, and the days of the week that each of them will be teaching. One can take the class for the first two days while the other will teach the same students same subject for the next three days (Murphy, Murphy, & Scantlebury, 2010). This approach is meant to ensure that learners understand the course materials as much as possible. Learners who find one of the teachers too complex to understand will have the opportunity of learning the same concepts when the second teacher takes over the class. In this paper, the researcher will focus on the concept of co-teaching to help demonstrate its relevance in the modern system of education.

Research Objectives
According to Andersson and Bendix (2011), when conducting a research, it is very critical to ensure that research objectives are clearly defined to help provide a clear focus on what should be achieved. In this study, the following are the specific objectives that the researcher sought to achieve when undertaking the research: To clearly define the concept of co-teaching and to differentiate it from other concepts of paired or pair teaching.
To investigate the effectiveness of co-teaching in enhancing learners ability to understand a given subject better.
To investigate the level of acceptability of co-teaching among learners and educators.
To identify some of the challenges associated with coteaching at various levels of education.

Theoretical Background
Co-teaching has increasingly become very important in various parts of the world and at various levels of learning as one of the best ways of ensuring that learners of different capabilities are provided with learning instructions using different strategies to enhance their ability to master them. Sims (2008) defines co-teaching as "A situation where two or more people sharing responsibility for teaching some or all of the students assigned to a classroom" (p. 61). The educators are expected to distribute the responsibility of teaching a given subject among themselves. Each of the educators is expected to have a specific day when he or she will undertake the teaching responsibilities and the areas where he or she would teach. In most of the cases, each of the educators is expected to pick areas within that subject that he or she has interest, experience and understanding. As  note, there are different methods of paired teaching which a very different from coteaching. In order to understand co-teaching properly, it may be necessary to understand some of the concepts of paired teaching.
a Collaborative teaching It is important to understand the difference that exists between collaborative teaching and co-teaching. According to Sims (2008), collaborative teaching is a situation where educators work as a team to help promote effective learning. This may take various approaches. For instance, an English teacher may seek help of fellow teacher in developing an effective plan on how to teach a given topic. The teachers will discuss the plan and the collaboration just ends at that stage. Collaborative teaching may also occur when one teacher requests for the help of a colleague in making exams or assignments in order to avoid biasness. The teacher marking the exam will be considered an external examiner who does not know the capacity of the individual learners. On the other hand, co-teaching is a situation where two or more teachers have the primary responsibility of planning, teaching, and marking the works of learners in a given class. As Indrisano, Garnick, and Maresco (2009) put it, coteaching can be considered an aspect of collaborative teaching, but not all collaborative teachings can be classified as co-teaching.
b Team teaching Team teaching has been in practice for a very long time, especially at high school level of education. In this approach of paired teaching, two teachers agree to bring their students together and teach them as a single class because of the relevance of the topic being taught. For instance, a history teacher and a business teacher may bring their students together when teaching how a historical pattern of trade took place. The teachers will first come together and determine the relevance of the course to their different subjects and then plan how to teach it to the learners. The history teacher may be given the opportunity to start the lesson by describing the historical perspective of trade, how it started, those who started it, how it developed, and its current status. The business teacher will then bring in the business aspect of the trade such as its relevance, how it takes place, and its prevalence in the modern society. The teachers will be working as a team to ensure that their students have a comprehensive knowledge about a given topic that exists in two different subjects. This is different from what happens in co-teaching. According to Forbes and Billet (2012), coteachers must be handling the same subject in the same class. Co-teachers are also expected to handle their class at different times, not in one sitting. This means that if one teacher handles the learners on Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays, the second teacher will come in on Wednesdays, and Thursdays. In team teaching, the paired teachers are supposed to be present in the same setting to participate in the teaching process. A business student may have a question for the history teacher that may enhance his ability to understand the topic.
c Inclusion Inclusion is one of the popular learning concepts which are closely related to co-teaching. According to Keefe and Moore (2004), this concept holds that learners are part of their classrooms irrespective of their abilities, and therefore, educators must ensure that they understand concepts taught in that classroom. This concept emphasizes on the fact that learners always have different abilities even if they belong to the same class. There are those who learn very fast, there are average students, and the slow learners. Inclusion emphasizes on the need to ensure that all learners are offered opportunity to understand what is expected of them at every stage of learning. This may involve a series of strategies to help the slow learners. For instance, a Mathematics teacher may organize for remedial lesions for the slow learners as an aspect of inclusion. Alternatively, a teacher may invite a fellow teacher to undertake a given subject to help learners understand it better. Any strategy that is used to ensure that learners of different capabilities are offered opportunity to understand a given subject is considered inclusion. It means that co-teaching may be considered as an aspect of inclusion. However, the two terms do not mean the same thing. Coteaching is very specific on what is expected of the teachers in enhancing an understanding of a given subject.

Relevance of Co-teaching in the Modern Society
Co-teaching is increasingly becoming popular in the modern education setting. It is important to understand what other scholars have to say about the increasing popularity of this method of teaching. According to McDuffie and Gelman (2008), co-teaching is one of the best ways of improving instructions to learners. It is obvious that different teachers have different strategies of delivering instructions to their students. A section of students may find a given way of delivering instructions better than others. That is why one student may excel in one subject but perform dismally in another. It is all about how the instruction is delivered. In coteaching, learners are offered a unique opportunity of receiving instructions on the same subjects by different teachers. It means that they have the privilege of getting two approaches of receiving instructions. If one approach is not suitable to them, then the other approach will definitely express the weaknesses. This method of teaching helps to bring all learners on board irrespective of their individual capabilities.
Co-teaching is very important when handling learners with special needs. According to Ruthanne (2005), special needs students may need different approaches of delivery of instructions. It is also common to find that one teacher has a better understanding of the needs of a section of these learners than others. By embracing co-teaching, different teachers assigned a given class will pair and find a way of combining their weaknesses and strengths to ensure that the special needs students are offered the best in terms of instruction delivery. One teacher may also help his colleague in understanding the needs of specific students to improve the way instructions is delivered to them. Sometimes these special needs students suffer from stigma that makes them feel less important or less appreciated in the society. When they are assigned two or more subjects to undertake a given subject, they tend to feel valued. This boosts their morale and ability to grasp different concepts taught to them.
According to Conderman (2011), private couching has been a popular practice for the past several years. Parents are always keen on ensuring that their children excel in their exams. When they realize that these learners have weaknesses in some subjects, they are always more than willing to hire other private tutors to help them understand concepts that were not clearly understood in class. This approach of enhancing the academic capability of learners may have its own shortcomings, especially when the private tutor takes a radical shift of issuing instructions from that which is used in school. This is common because the private tutor and the classroom teacher rarely meet and discuss how the couching should take place. It is common for such strategies to result in further confusion for the learner. This problem is completely eliminated when co-teaching is embraced. The two teachers involved in handling a given class get to share and plan for the lessons. This eliminates any form of confusion that may exist when delivering instructions. In co-teaching, the second teacher knows exactly what is expected of him based on the progress that the previous teacher had made. This approach also reduces the expenses that the parents might have been forced to incur by hiring private tutors. They will be assured that their children are accorded perfect opportunity to understand instructions irrespective of their learning capacities.

Pedagogical Theories and Their Relevance to Co-teaching
According to Johnson and Brumback (2013), a number of underpinning pedagogical theories can be used to enhance understanding of the concept of co-teaching. On such theory is Marcia's Identity Statuses (Duchardt, Marlow, & Reeves, 2006). This theory holds that a learner's identify it determined by choices and personal commitments regarding social traits. One's identity and social traits defines his or her attitude towards a given subject in class. Choices and commitments that a student makes largely depend on the approach that is taken by the teacher. A learner may develop a negative identity or trait towards a given subject simply because he or she does not like the teacher responsible for that given subject. Once a negative attitude is developed towards the teacher and his or her subject, then it may be impossible for the teacher to issue instructions successfully. This problem is addressed by embracing co-teaching. If a learner does not like one of his English teachers, then he will not develop a negative attitude towards the subject because there is a second teacher responsible for the same subject. For the sake of the second teacher, he will make a personal commitment to develop a positive identity and an attitude towards that particular subject.
Transformative learning theory is one of the most popular pedagogical theories in use today. According to Dieker and Murawski (2003), this theory explains how people reinterpret or revise meanings. Learning as a process generally entails changing the meaning and perspectives of different things as one becomes more knowledgeable. This may be a gradual process. When issuing instructions in class, it is possible to find cases where learners develop a wrong concept because of his or her inability to understand what has been taught. This theory emphasizes on the need to reinterpret and revise concepts learnt in order to refine them and to ensure that only correct information is retained after the who process. Nothing does this in a better way than co-teaching. When the second teacher comes to teach learners, he or she is expected to touch on the concepts taught by the first teacher. This facilitates reinterpretation and revision of the concepts learnt previously. Whenever a learner feels confused in any way, they can always ask for clarification from any of the teachers to improve their knowledge on that particular subject.
Another popular pedagogical theory is the Social-Cognitive Learning. This theory holds that majorly takes place when the learner receives instruction or observes what is taking place within the environment. In this context, the learning behavior is not governed by any reinforcement other what they see and hear. According to Seglem and VanZant (2010), in the olden days, learning was reinforced by factors such as punishment for those who failed to follow instructions. This meant that learners had to go out of their ways to ensure that they understood the concepts taught and were able to pass their exams. Such systems have been abolished, and as explained in this theory, learning in the modern world is fully based on what students hear and see. In co-teaching, the aim is to enhance learners' ability to learn through hearing and observation, and in absence of any reinforcements. This approach of teaching creates a scenario where learners are offered more opportunities to hear given instructions severally and from different teachers.

Research Methodology
When conducting a research, Guest (2013) says that it is important to come up with a clear methodology that will help define the approach used in collecting, analyzing, and presenting data. The researcher relied on two sources of information in this study. Secondary sources of data formed a major source of information. According to McCormick, Ogata, and Heck (2001), a piece of research is meant to be informative in nature. It is supported to advance knowledge and theories in a given field. To do this, a researcher will need to understand what others scholars have found out in the existing bodies of literature. He or she must investigate the existing controversies in order to find ways of addressing them. Above all, a researcher will need to identify the existing gaps in the body of knowledge in order to come up with a finding that addresses these gaps. Failure to review the existing pieces of literatures would lead to duplication of the existing knowledge in a given field. Such duplications may not have any significance in enhancing information and knowledge in the field of concern. It is for this reason that the researcher conducted a thorough review of the existing literatures in this field. Literatures were collected from books and journal articles relevant to this topic. It is important to note that secondary were not limited to the local contexts of Saudi Arabia. Some of them were published in other countries.

Participants
Research is an extensive process that entails planning, collection of data, analysis, and drawing conclusions. However, the most important part is identifying the population in which the sample would be drawn from (Johnson & Christensen, 2014). In this study, participants were identified in advance through sampling. Those involved in research were informed early enough to enable them prepare adequately for the interview. Participation was voluntary meaning that no person was compelled to give information (Noonan, McCormick, & Heck, 2003). Additionally, participants were given sufficient time to respond to the questions in the questionnaire. Since this study used both qualitative and quantitative methods, participants were required to fill in the questions, as well as attend an interview session to support the short answers in the questionnaires. Mixed method ensures the weaknesses of either the qualitative or the quantitative method are eliminated hence paving way for triangulation.

Sampling
Sampling is an important aspect of research and the researcher (Greene, 2007). The researcher selected participants using simple random sampling method. This was important in helping to eliminate any form of biasness in the selecting the participants. It ensured that the participants were selected purely on the basis of chance other than any predetermined method. The researcher issued questionnaires to participants to enable them understand specific data that was expected from them. This was important to make them think through the questions in advance before providing the necessary responses. This was important in ensuring that their responses were well-thought after, instead of giving quick responses as a way of simply filling the questionnaire. The researcher carefully selected 117 participants to take part in the interview.

Scope of Primary Data Collection
According to Beninghof (2012), defining the scope of primary data collection in a given research is very important. It informs anyone who may want to use this document that primary data was collected from a given location and hence its application should be based on that given setting. Policy makers and other stakeholders may want to apply recommendations made in this research. They deserve to know the scope within which primary data were collected. The primary data were collected from participants in various learning institutions in Riyadh and Jeddah. The researcher restricted data collection to these two cities because of the number of learning institutions and their relevance as the major cities in this country. Data obtained from the participants could be generalized in the context of Saudi Arabia as a whole.

Ethical Issue
The researcher was keen to embrace ethical issues when conducting this research. Top on the list was the need to promote confidentiality of the participants. The confidentiality of the respondents was protected in order to ensure that they are not intimidated in any was because of their views. It was agreed that there were no video or audio recording since this would make them nervous and influence the pattern of their response. Before conducting the interview, briefing was paramount and the consent forms was given to each participant to ensure that participation was purely based on the willingness of the participants.

Quantitative Survey
Under this technique, the researcher drafted questions that were issued to participants using a standardized questionnaire. Participants were required to answer the questions accurately without omitting some. The questionnaire was designed in such a way that the views of participants on co-teaching, codevelopment, and co-achievement were captured clearly. Participants were given equal treatment in terms of the weight of their responses. Filling each questionnaire took approximately between seven and ten minutes. Once completed, the questionnaire was sealed in an envelope to await analysis. While administering the questionnaire, the researcher tried to prevent social desirability bias, which comes about when participants over represent positive images when responding to questions and at the same time under portraying the attitudes or behaviors, which are less desirable. Since the questionnaire was administered in a face-to-face interview, chances of giving false information that represent false image were minimized. Data obtained from the quantitative survey were computed in mathematical tools to generate findings. These were presented in graphs, tables, and charts to enhance understanding.

Qualitative Semi-structured Interviews
According to Creswell and Clark (2011), quantitative data are always important in defining the statistics in relation to a given research topic. However, they lack the capacity to give a detailed description of a given concept. This is where qualitative research becomes very important. Qualitative research, also known as descriptive research, makes it possible to give a detailed description of an event. It provides detailed description of events and how they took place. Used alongside quantitative data, descriptive data provides an explanation that supports the figures provided. That is why the researcher considered it very useful in this research. While quantitative data provided information about the prevalence of co-teaching and how popular it is among educators and learners, qualitative data provided explanation as to why this teaching method was popular or unpopular among a given group.

Data Analysis
Data analysis refers to the process of transforming raw data into refined useful information that can be of use to people (Honigsfeld & Dove, 2010). This research took both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Depending on the type and accuracy needed, data analysis can take a simple descriptive form, or a more complex statistical inferencing. The technique used in the analysis can be univariate analysis, bivariate analysis or multivariate analysis. In selecting the appropriate method, Brewer and Hunter (2006) say that a researcher should ensure that assumptions relating to the method are satisfied. The researcher coded and analyzed data using mathematical tools. The researcher used cross tabulation to determine the popularity of this teaching method among educators and learners and its prevalence in this country. The researcher used descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation, percentage and frequencies to describe the information provided on this topic. Further, the researcher used tables, figures, and charts to present the findings of the study.

Discussion of Results
The results obtained from the respondents were and presented in tabular form to bring out the views of the respondents about the topic under investigation. The first question that was posed to the respondent was the characteristic of teachers that can enable them to work with one another. It was necessary to understand what it takes for the co-teachers to work as a team in teaching a given subject. The response obtained is shown below.

Figure 1. Co-teachers should have personal characteristics that enable them to work effectively with another teacher.
Most of the respondents (61.40%) strongly agreed that coteachers should have personal characteristics that enable them to work effectively with one another. About 31% of the respondents also shared this view. Only 2% of the respondents had a contrary opinion towards this issue. This shows that for this system of teaching to be successful, coteachers will need personal characteristics that will enable them to work as a unit.
The second question wanted to determine if co-teaching actually supports students with special needs. The information from review of literatures suggested that coteaching supports students with special needs. The researcher was interested in confirming this claim by getting the views of the teachers. The results obtained are shown in the figure below. Majority of the respondents (58.62%) agreed that indeed co-teaching supports students with special needs. Less that 8% had a contrary view towards this topic, while 33.62 percent of the respondents were not sure. This is a clear demonstration that coteaching is very instrumental for learners with special needs.
The issue of curriculum development is also very important when it comes to co-teaching. The researcher wanted to know what the participants thought about the effect of co-teaching in developing effective curricular. The table below shows the results obtained from the respondents. The respondents felt that by addressing one subject as a team, they are able to develop improved curricular. 25.44% strongly agreed with this, while 43.86 shared their opinion. 8% of the responded stated that it did very little in curricular improvement. Most of the respondents explained that co-teaching has helped them develop very effective curricular because they get to share and come up with comprehensive plans on how to address various subjects.
In the review of literatures, many scholars had suggested that co-teaching plays a critical role in helping teachers with limited instructional experience to improve, especially when placed with highly skilled teachers. The researcher wanted to confirm this claim. The response given by the participants is shown in the figure below. There was a near unanimous agreement among the respondents about the importance of co-teaching in enhancing instructional skills of less experienced teachers when they are paired with highly skilled teachers. Most of them agreed that this approach of teaching was very important to new teachers because the two teachers would sit and share ideas on how to develop effective teaching plan. The participants also stated that when they co-teach, they get to address challenges within their classes.
One of the major issues mentioned in books and journals that were reviewed was that although co-teaching is popularly practices in various parts of the world, training on co-teaching was something very rare. The existing bodies of knowledge show that very little has been done to train teachers on co-teaching. When asked about this issue, the response given by the participants was as shown below. It is clear from the findings made from the primary data that training is an issue in co-teaching. Majority of the respondents (78%) stated that they had never received any form of training on co-teaching. Most of them stated that when they were in training institutions, nothing was mentioned about co-teaching as a concept that they can use as a teaching practice. They were only using mutual agreement when coming up with lesson plans for their classes. According to these participants, this was a challenge in developing effective plans.
Co-teaching has been very popular among language teachers. They find it very effective in enabling learners to understand different concepts of the language. The researcher wanted to determine the view of the participants towards co-teaching as a way of maximizing students' learning of the language. The outcome is shown in the figure below. The majority of the participants felt that co-teaching maximizes students' learning of the language. Only less that 16% had an opposite view. The majority of the learners stated that co-teaching provides learners with different ways of receiving instructions. In case a learner failed to understand a concept as taught by one teacher, they could understand that concept as taught by the other teacher.
According to Fattig and Taylor (2008), co-teaching plays a very important role in enhancing communication skills, courage, and respect of the teachers. This was a claim that the researcher was interested in determining by engaging the respondents who participated in this research. This was specifically so because some scholars felt that co-teaching had a negative impact in terms of earning teachers respect among their students. Teachers who were seen to have lesser skills and experience as compared to their partners tend to earn little respect from their students (Honigsfeld & Dove, 2012). The researcher wanted to address this contradictory opinion. The figure below shows how these learners responded to the questions. Most of the respondents felt that indeed co-teaching enhances communication skills, courage, and respect among the teachers. They stated that when more experienced and highly skilled teachers are paired with new teachers, the new teachers get to learn about the skills and strategies used by the experienced teachers. This improves their courage in the classroom and respect among students. A few respondents complained about the issue of respect. They claimed that some students tend to be less respectful when they realized that one teacher was less experienced than the other.
Co-teaching has been regarded as an effective way through which a teacher may review his or her teaching experience in terms of seeking for feedback. When two teachers are assigned the task of handling a given subject, each of them may benefit in getting feedback about their teaching methods. For instance, when the second teacher comes to handle a subject that has been taught by the first teacher, he or she will be in a better position to tell how well learners were able to grasp given concept taught by the previous teacher. The first teacher can therefore, provide the first teacher with an appropriate feedback about how effective his or her teaching methods were. The responses obtained from the respondents when asked to shed more light on this issue are given below. Over 85% of the respondents stated that co-teaching actually helps in reviewing teaching experience. The respondents stated that they found co-teaching very important in reviewing their performance. According to them, they used co-teaching to help them determine effectiveness of their teaching methods.

Findings
This research has helped in understanding various concepts about co-teaching and how it is applied in different learning contexts. From the research, it is clear that coteaching is very different from other concepts of paired teaching. In co-teaching, teachers are assigned the task of teaching the same class same subject. Co-teachers are expected to sit together a plan on how to teach that particular class. They are expected to teach on different days as per their plans. According to the findings from both primary and secondary sources, co-teaching has been very popular among language teachers. This does not necessarily mean that the concept cannot be applied in different subjects. Wilson and Blednick (2011) say that Mathematics and Chemistry are some of the subjects where teachers are increasingly embracing the concept of co-teaching because of their complexity. When applied, correctly, co-teaching enables learners of different capacities to understand concepts being taught. In case they find a teaching method of one teacher complex, they still have the opportunity to getting a different teacher teaching the same topic.
The findings from the primary and secondary sources show that there is a general acceptance of co-teaching among various stakeholders. According to Perez (2012), institutions of learning are currently under pressure to produce highly skilled graduates at different levels of education. The main problem they have been facing is how to ensure that quick learners, average students, and slow learners are all accorded proper opportunity to grasp learning concepts presented to them. Some institutions have been using remedial lessons as a means of enhancing the ability of the slow learners to grasp various learning concepts. However, this approach has not been very effective. The emergence of co-teaching has been a big relief to the schools' administrators. This approach has promoted the ability of their learners to excel in their academics.
Teachers have also accepted this learning concept. The primary data collected from the respondents clearly shows that these teachers are comfortable with co-teaching as a way of enhancing their teaching methods. For a long time, these teachers have been struggling to find effective ways of peerreviewing themselves. Co-teaching has offered them the much needed review strategy. Co-teachers can review effectiveness of teaching methods employed by their partners in class. This way, they get to know how they can improve on their teaching methods. Given that this method improves communication skills and competence of the teachers, their confidence improves a great deal. It transforms them into better teachers.
Learners are the greatest beneficiaries of co-teaching as a method of delivering instructions. Many learners always fail to grasp concepts taught to them not because they are stupid, but because they do not understand the teaching approach used by a given teacher. This makes them to develop a negative attitude towards a given subject just because of the personality of the teacher or the approach taken in teaching that subject. Embracing the concept of co-teaching offers them opportunity to learn a given subject from different teachers.

Conclusions and Recommendations
Co-teaching is an emerging approach of delivering instruction to learners. The information gathered from primary and secondary data shows that this teaching method is effective in ensuring that learners of different capacities are offered the best opportunity possible to understand the content of various subjects they have to learn. It also helps in creating an environment where different teachers use their teaching strengths to assist their fellow teachers overcome their weaknesses. For instance, when highly skilled and experienced teachers are paired with newly hired teachers to handle a given subject, the new teachers will gain more insight about how they should handle their subject in order to achieve the best results. From the findings made in this research, one of the biggest challenges identified about co-teaching is lack of training among teachers on how it should be conducted. The following are some of the recommendations that the stakeholders should consider embracing to improve the effectiveness of co-teaching.
Teachers should be subjected to proper training in order to understand the concept of co-teaching and how it should be applied in a practical context. Co-teachers should have a detailed plan on how they plan to undertake a given lesson to ensure that there is unity in their teaching. Learners should be made to understand the concept of co-teaching to eliminate a wrong impression that one teacher is meant to address weaknesses of the other.