Abstract:
Teaching is a task that is open to innovation and adaptation on the part of those teachers who handle varied techniques and strategies so as to bring about the objectives of the study programmes and come out with better learning outcomes. Collaborative Teaching is a newly-introduced teaching style that has proved its effectiveness and duly advocated by teachers worldwide. It is the state where two teachers carry out the task of teaching jointly and cooperatively with a group of learners and switch roles, when required, to fill in the deficiencies in the information imparted by one teacher, all for the sake of motivating learners and avoiding the routine and boredom that may be there during the lecture/lesson. This research sets out of the problem that many learners may show no interest in one teacher’s personality and way of teaching for different personal, educational and social reasons and that diversifying the sources of information, i.e. making two teachers teach simultaneously, is expected to bring learners to the class and acquire information in a better way. It further hypothesizes that participants enrolling in the pedagogy courses at Nawroz University Pedagogy Training and Development Centre Collaborative teaching have positive attitudes towards 1) the collaborative teaching Approach adopted by the lecturers teaching at the Centre, and 2) as a teaching style and strategy at large, and 2) is effective in terms of its varied aspects that attracting participants to enroll in the courses and benefit from the modules taught throughout the 6-month training period. On this basis, the current research aims at on this basis, this research aims at identifying the attitudes of the participants joining the pedagogy courses at Nawroz Pedagogy Training and Development Centre towards collaborative teaching as a teaching style/approach and its varied aspects in terms of their effectiveness in attracting them to enroll in and benefit from the modules taught. To validate the aforementioned hypothesis and bring about the preceding aims, a randomly selected sample of 74 participants were given a 32-item questionnaire, of approved validity and reliability, to state their attitudes toward collaborative teaching as a teaching approach according to a 5-point scale. Analysis of the collected data show that the participants have very positive attitudes towards collaborative teaching as far as its effectiveness and benefits are concerned.
KEYWORDS
Collaborative Teaching, Pedagogy, Attitudes, Teaching Approach,
Hussein A. Ahmed1*, Muaid M. Abdul-Qader2
1Professor, College of Languages, Nawroz University / Duhok-77, Iraq
2Lect., College of Law & Political Sciences, Nawroz University / Duhok-77, Iraq