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Abstract
Coteaching can be described as two educational professionals working together to provide instruction for the same group of students in the same physical environment. In the three article manuscripts that comprise this dissertation, I examine coteaching as an instructional model for teaching language and content to English language learners (ELLs) in elementary schools in the southeastern United States. The first manuscript is an ethnographic case study that contributes to the sparse literature on coteaching ELLs by describing the practice in a fourth grade classroom. Using ethnographic methods and a collaborative teacher inquiry group, I analyze both the local micro-level factors within the coteachers classroom as well as the broader macro-level factors at play in the district and state context. Findings document the coteachers consistent use of parallel teaching, and to a lesser extent, team teaching, to promote language and content learning for the students in their care. In the second manuscript, coauthored with Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, we employ a critical perspective to challenge the presentation of coteaching as a panacea for promoting language and content learning for ELLs. Using ethnographic and arts-based approaches to research, the study encourages teachers to articulate the qualities of their coteaching experiences in order to better understand the complexity of coteaching as an instructional practice. Analysis of these data revealed the extent to which relations of power and status in the school setting as well as issues of language, race, and ethnicity are implicated, yet rarely articulated, in the design and implementation of coteaching. The final manuscript suggests the need to conceptualize coteaching ELLs from an ecological perspective. Such a perspective recognizes language and content instruction as being intimately interrelated and consequently views coteaching as occurring in dynamic and complex contexts. The manuscript analyzes data from classroom observations and planning meetings between coteachers, as well as district and state documents to articulate the potential benefits of an ecological perspective.