CHANGING THE CLASSROOM

By O. Jerome (Jed) Brown
April, 1995

One of the important factors effecting the formal teaching/learning process is the instructional environment. Beyond the actual physical structure, this environment includes the circumstances, conditions, and objects support the formal teaching/learning process. Although improperly referred to on occasion as a method, team teaching is an issue pertaining to the instructional environment and having profound implications for learning.
There are several used of a team-teaching configuration that are based on sound educational theory and practice. For the most part, the decision to team teach is dependent upon the type of curricular activity being used. Some activities lend themselves to a team-teaching situation and others do not at all. Other than for curricula-based reasons, team teaching has been used to lower the effects of class size as has been done effectively with the use of instructional aides in special education.

Although there is nothing inherently wrong in using a team-teaching configuration, the proponents of educational restructuring are promoting team teaching for reasons that have no basis in sound educational theory. It would seem that the team-teaching arrangement is being used not as tool to enhance learning, but rather as a mechanism for manipulating the educational system by altering the conditions and circumstances of the environment to foster a non-instructional agenda.

The first reason that reformers are promoting team teaching is to establish a Total Quality Management (TQM) culture in each and every school building. The team approach of TQM is not based on sound educational principles, but a theory of business that is dubious at best. The tQM culture perverts the instructional environment by imposing a team configuration irrespective of an curricular determinants. The primary purpose of TQM is to supply fertile ground for the control of teachers through specious consensus building that establishes a group mentality.

The second reason reformers are fostering a team approach is for the purpose of conditioning – not children, but teachers. Teams are used to establish an environment that is conducive to a specialized form of conditioning that Bandura has identified as “observational learning.” This conditioning is effective in overcoming the objections voiced by teachers who do not wish to succumb to the TQM culture. Under the direction of a skilled team leader, team members can be manipulated into accepting reforms through the reinforcements of social pressure and team approval.

The third reason for pushing team teaching is perhaps the most abusive and comes from the reformers own documents. The truth is exposed on page 38 of a proposal to the New American Schools Development Corporation, by the National Center on Education and the Economy, for the National Alliance for Restructuring Education. The proposal states, “We will explore doing virtually all teaching in teams that could “cover” for members doing field work elsewhere.”

In other words, teachers can be pulled away from their instructional duties to push the reformers agenda and still maintain the legal requirement of having an adult present. With the common ratio of three teachers to ninety students, taking a teacher away actually increases class size to one teacher for forty-five students. SO MUCH FOR EXCELLENCE THROUGH TEAM TEACHING.