Two Models of Coteaching from University Teaching Staff: Phenomenographic Research

The literature of coteaching in the post-secondary landscape encompasses a wide array of different conceptions. Having multiple meanings of coteaching in higher education may pose some challenges for effectively implementing and researching this collaborative model. We should have a clear picture of the qualitatively different ways in which educators who co-teach in post-secondary settings understand this practice. Aiming to offer one of the first contributions to this effort, we analyzed the experiences of 16 university coteaching practitioners from a top university in Bogotá, Colombia. The sample participants´ interviews were analyzed using a phenomenographic methodology (Marton, 1981), which seeks to capture the variation and complexity of the understanding of a phenomenon. Our findings reveal two perspectives for understanding coteaching, one relying on the meaning (referential conceptions) and the other on the practice (structural conceptions). Participants´ coteaching meanings are determined by four qualitatively different understandings: cooperative teaching, collaborative teaching, pedagogical training, and critical pedagogy. When it comes to practice, the findings show eight categories, some of which have been previously described in narrative accounts about coteaching. The variability emerging from our findings highlights conceptual multiplicity rather than uniformity, thereby shedding light on the complexity of coteaching in post-secondary settings.