While one teacher clearly led the discussion in this session, the second teacher was also very active; in particular, she sought to involve one particularly quiet participant and would add to the discussion by asking supplementary/clarifying questions and directing several questions at him specifically. Even though the topic for this session (team-building) was one that neither teacher had taught previously, their dual presence maintained a noticeably higher level of momentum in the discussion tempo – when one teacher hesitated, the other would (re-)enter the discussion and maintain the discussion with an additional question or content.
In the second class with two teachers, one was the lead teacher (and course co-ordinator), who undertook most of the assessment and administrative duties, while the other was the literacy teacher being observed. Both teachers worked with individuals or sometimes groups of two or three learners.
The third multiple-teacher situation we observed was an integrated class, where
a literacy teacher worked alongside a vocational teacher. The stated aim was
for both of them to deliver vocational content and support the students to develop
their literacy skills in that context. How that would take shape depended on
the learners’ needs and course content. In the first session we observed,
delivery of the vocational content fell in the main to the vocational teacher.
The literacy teacher’s main role was as an ‘advocate’ or ‘interpreter’
for the learner: to intervene when it appeared that learners did not understand
the content from the vocational teacher, to encourage learners to interact and
ask questions, to develop students’ vocabulary and to model note-taking.
Following the input, the literacy tutor intervened to ensure the instructions
on an activity set by the vocational tutor were fully understood, and then roved
the classroom asking, "Are you alright?"
and assisting learners to
get on-task. Both teachers then worked with individual learners to practise
tasks they were to be assessed on, offering positive feedback on what they did
well and pointing out what they had missed.
In another session, the same literacy teacher provided an opportunity for students to write their learning goals, and then went round checking if these goals were both specific and achievable. Following this exercise, a free-writing session was used as an assessment of progress. The vocational tutor then joined the class, while the literacy teacher continued with the group on a session about how to write e-mails. Several learners later reported that the personal support they received and the literacy teacher’s efforts to build their confidence were critical to their staying on the course. The literacy teacher also acted as a teacher’s ‘assistant’: handing out worksheets, moving the video and TV, helping the vocational teacher log on to her computer and undertaking an administrative task around assessments.
The teachers reported that coping with students’ issues and crises is an integral part of literacy, numeracy and language teaching - it ‘comes with the territory’, as one teacher explained: