Co-teaching for Chinese learning in second language young learners

Abstract

In facing diversity in classrooms, the arrangement of co-teaching has been adopted in different inclusive settings such as teaching children with special educational needs, second language learners, and new immigrants. Recent co-taught classrooms has displayed that co-teaching practices are advantageous for individualized or community learning. In Hong Kong, co-teaching is a familiar arrangement in many early childhood settings. Especially in institutions adopting open floor plans for flexible groupings, or using differentiated materials for diverse learners. In a recent project, 'Start from the Beginning-Chinese Supporting Scheme for Non-Chinese Speaking Students in Kindergartens' (2017-2019), the collaboration of co-teaching between the university-trained teacher-researchers and the school-based practising teachers is put in place at the participated kindergartens. In supporting learning Chinese as second language (CSL) in young children, the kindergartens adopt a complementary CSL course founded on the “Dynamic Enrichment Learning Mode” (DELM). New strategies of teaching promoting dynamic enrichment learning are employed in the instructional design. This study aims to identify the various models of co-teaching when adopting the DELM approach for CSL curriculum and instruction. The main research focus is on the characteristics of co-teaching models in relation to three basic stages, including co-planning, co-instructing, and co-assessing. In other words, this study has a focus on the processes which involved the steps, actions, strategies, resources and the roles taken. This study adopts the case study method. The major data collection devices include interviewing the teachers and the teacher-researchers, conducting teaching observations and reviewing video-recordings. To begin with, the framework of six co-teaching model widely used by researchers such as Carty & Farrell (2018), Cook & Friend (1995), Friend (2015) was employed to start identifying the characteristics. Findings of new features were emerged from the data in accordance with the variations of contextual factors including the concentration of non-Chinese speaking students. The findings will contribute to the improvement of co-teaching approaches, building educators’ professional capacity for effective teaching and expanding a repertoire of ongoing professional development via co-teaching models. The service project of “Start from the Beginning-Chinese Supporting Scheme for Non-Chinese Speaking Students in Kindergartens” (2017-2019) is funded by Oxfam Hong Kong, Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Fund and Credit Suisse Group. Six seed kindergartens participated to offer the CSL courses to about 200 kindergarteners in the 2017-2019 phase.