Philosophy of Practice (PoP) for Team-Teaching Toolkit
The following toolkit was developed from the results of an extensive educational research project that spanned over six years. The research project utilised auto-ethnography to recount and reflect upon professional learning over time, and when working with others. The overall account centred on a critical re-analysis of findings from four published journal articles, which I co-authored with others. The account offered a new insight into what the term blended learning might mean for team-teaching. The toolkit (as a result of the extensive research account) presented here draws attention to the educative potential of collaborating with others to develop scholarly understandings of practice, highlighting key elements of team-teaching when using blended learning. Reflective learning is a powerful way to investigate process and in this toolkit it is a key element for understanding blended learning for team-teaching in a new way.
The utilisation of the PoP framework can encourage team-teaching members to continually massage a group-based inquiry mindset. This is especially so when establishing an agreed-to shared understanding to provide role clarity and instigate multiple communication strategies for good practice. Educational change agents are required to engage with deep understandings of practice through a process of reflective learning, collaboration, as well as the displaying of better ways to understand what effective team-teaching might mean. One can re-position team-teaching and blended learning as not just about the integration of technology into teaching and learning. Rather, blended learning is also about the importance of collaboratively unpacking teacher and student roles, responding to unique contexts/cultures of operation, and collectively instigating a purposefully designed team-teaching process to improve practice.
The PoP toolkit (as a resource for users) can be used as a conversation starter or as a model to support others to design and implement an approach for effective team-teaching. The model has not been tested extensively. Therefore, I present the PoP toolkit as a work-in-progress that requires testing. The PoP was developed through a collaborative, reflective and observational process during several higher education research and practice initiatives over six years. This included the use of evidence gathered from several and diverse team-teaching situations in blended learning environments. I encourage users of the PoP toolkit to reach out to me and provide feedback. Practice should always be improved upon and never remain the same.
