Examining Team-teaching Competencies in a Taiwanese Bilingual Academic Subject Classroom: A Bilingual NEST's Autoethnography

Autoethnography as a Research Method

Ellis et al. (2011: 1) defined autoethnography as “an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze (graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand cultural experience (ethno).” Most studies on team teaching in East Asia utilized interviews and, sometimes, classroom observations, but the choice of autoethnography allowed the author to examine “a holistic and intimate perspective” that accounts for the entirety of interactions experienced (Chang, 2008: 52). Graham et al. (2021: 5) further expanded on this advantage over so-called traditional studies, suggesting that research participants “may have never considered the ways their experiences are situated culturally, socially, or politically … and may not always provide a complete picture for the researcher, dismissing experiences they may deem as inconsequential.”

To be effective as a research method, autoethnographies must remain distinct from autobiographies and other forms of storytelling (Chang, 2008). Jones et al. (2016: 22) stated that to be an autoethnography, the following requirements must be met: it must “(1) purposefully [comment] on/[critique] culture and cultural practices, (2) [make] contributions to existing research, (3) [embrace] vulnerability with purpose, and (4) [create] a reciprocal relationship with audiences in order to compel a response.”

Author Positionality

Autoethnography is often criticized for potential bias, as both the data and analysis come from the researcher. For this reason, engagement with researcher reflexivity is crucial for credibility (Starfield, 2020). My identity as an American NEST scholar and teacher educator in East Asia certainly impacts how I view the world. However, I believe my identity as an English–Mandarin bilingual and my many years of living and teaching in Taiwan allow for a counter-lens as I interrogate my collaboration experience. My past facilitation of cultural intelligence PD workshops with NESTs and LTs has strengthened my reflexivity and further prepared me to view culture, both my own and the culture of others, through multiple dimensions. While I have experience as both a content and a language teacher, my training is not in science education, the academic subject of this project. Therefore, I must recognize my leanings toward the language side of bilingual education and try to imagine how science teachers may view these experiences differently. While there is always the potential for bias in autoethnography (and in any research method), I hope that my reflexivity and training as a qualitative researcher will allow me to present these experiences as they occurred. In areas where I may have not, the reader is encouraged to consider the above positionality when understanding and challenging my conclusions.

The Bilingual Education Project

This study was conducted at a public junior high school in a small city in Taiwan. The school had not been designated as a bilingual school, but a longtime friend who was a science LT/school administrator had expressed interest in experimenting with bilingual education. The project was seen as ideal for an inquiry of the pedagogical aspect of NEST–LT team teaching; my friend's position as an administrator allowed us flexibility with the logistical aspect, and our personal/professional relationship of over a decade eliminated common issues with the interpersonal aspect. Further, my partner and I hold graduate degrees and are licensed junior high school teachers with over two decades of combined classroom experience. This enabled us to enter this collaboration with a high degree of individual teaching competency, allowing for a greater focus on collaborative teacher competencies.

We implemented a 4-week, 8-hr (2 hr per week) pilot bilingual science unit for a class of 28 seventh-grade students with varying English proficiency (beginner and intermediate levels) and native Mandarin proficiency. After some discussion, it was decided that our collaboration would be done through a strict separation arrangement for the first two weeks (García, 2009), where my partner would use Mandarin for 1 hr of instruction, and I would use English for the other. Students would engage in an experiment on body reflexes for the third week, with both teachers facilitating and assisting. On the final day, students would orally present the results in Mandarin and English, receiving feedback from both teachers.

Data Sources and Collection

Chang (2008) describes three types of data in autoethnography: self-observational, self-reflective, and external data. This study uses all three data types to triangulate each source's findings and add credibility to the study. All local and national research ethics guidelines were adhered to during the study.

Data Analysis

I began data analysis by coding the reflective journal with descriptive codes (Miles et al., 2020). I then reviewed the class videos and recorded observation notes, focusing on areas that aligned or contrasted with my reflection journal. Upon completion, I proceeded with descriptive coding of the LT team teacher reflection and the class observation notes. Once all sources had been coded with descriptive codes, I engaged in several rounds of deductive analysis, where descriptive codes were matched with the seven teacher competences. After the deductive analysis, one final check of the data and coding was conducted to ensure intra-rater reliability.

Scientific Knowledge Competence

As discussed above, my LT was an expert in science teaching, and I brought expertise as a foreign language and bilingual education teacher and teacher educator. While both of us brought deep knowledge of our disciplines, the lack of fundamental knowledge in our respective partner's discipline affected our collaboration. While I entered this collaboration intending to defer to my LT on all science-related matters, she seemed to hope I could contribute more in this area:

During the planning meeting, the LT showed me her syllabus. The second day was designated for discussing differences in science internationally. She asked me about the differences between science in Taiwan and the United States. Honestly, I have no clue. (Planning Visit Reflection Notes)

From the beginning, she asked me to provide my ideas for the lesson content and learning activities, but I had little to offer with my lack of previous training in science education. I got the impression she expected me to lead the curriculum planning, and she would follow along, but my training only allowed me to contribute toward planning for language-related aspects, such as the lab report and presentations. I simply did not have the science education background to contribute ideas related to the science content as she may have hoped. My lack of scientific knowledge competence in science meant she would need to forgo my input in these matters and make curricular decisions independently.

Regarding the knowledge of bilingual education, my LT's lack of expertise in this area created a sense of uncertainty for her:

After the class, the first question from my partner was, “What is the difference between English class and bilingual class?” (Week 1 Reflection Notes)

It is worth keeping in mind that the purpose of the LT inviting the author to the school was so that she could experience and better understand how bilingual education could be practiced in a public school in Taiwan. While the concept of bilingual education was certainly discussed between the two of us before the class, actually seeing it play out in the classroom may have illuminated certain aspects of the practice that the LT had not previously realized or fully understood. The LT did not necessarily need an in-depth knowledge of bilingual education and language acquisition within this collaboration, but a basic understanding may have helped her better understand the goals and how they may be realized in practice from the onset. Despite this, I believe the course ultimately provided students with an experience in line with the goals of bilingual education—that is, learning experiences in content and language. From this perspective, our different scientific knowledge competences complemented each other to create a successful student experience. In line with the target my partner and I set from the beginning, every student in the class spoke at least one complete sentence of English (among additional information in Mandarin) during their final presentations about their experiment, displaying that each student had taken an important first step toward communicating science content knowledge in English and meeting the outcome of the course.

Linguistic Competence

My co-teacher is a proficient user of Mandarin but a basic user of English, and I am a proficient user of English and an independent (intermediate level) user of Mandarin. Thus, we brought different levels of linguistic competence to the bilingual classroom. While our strengths in our dominant languages allowed us to provide students with instruction in both languages, our weaknesses in our non-dominant language affected us in several ways.

Our bilingual imbalance required our partnership to rely on my abilities in Mandarin. For most of our interactions, my proficiency in Mandarin was sufficient for the task. Yet, as I reflected after the initial visit, problems arose.

If I am being honest, we faced some language issues. At times, I struggled to understand what she was saying. For her, it was apparent from her facial expressions that, at times, she did not understand my Mandarin. (Planning Visit Reflection Notes)

Our language breakdowns typically occurred when she was using science-specific terminology or when I was explaining bilingual education principles during our planning. More often than not, these communication breakdowns remained unresolved, and we redirected the conversation elsewhere. In these moments when communication issues occurred, a higher linguistic competence from either party would have helped. Specifically, I would have benefited from a more extensive science-related vocabulary or stronger skills in expressing the ideas of my academic field through my non-dominant language. Further, translanguaging, or shuttling between languages (García, 2009), could also have been useful for expressing and clarifying messages had both of us had a sufficient proficiency in both languages.

As for co-teaching, my bilingual linguistic competence allowed me to implement several impromptu moments where I referred to my partner's lesson in Mandarin:

Let's brainstorm research questions … As your teacher told you, when you think about a research project, we first need a topic … Like your teacher said, we need to pick a simple thing, one small thing. (Week 1 Video)

From the excerpt above, I used information from the LT's lesson to help the students make connections with mine. Without a linguistic ability to comprehend the LT's Mandarin lesson, such impromptu connections would not have been possible. I was further able to leverage my bilingualism during student presentations. Given that students gave presentations in Mandarin and English, my linguistic competency allowed me to evaluate the presentations in both languages. In contrast, the LT could only assess the Mandarin portions and relied on me to relay the English parts to her. Thus, it would seem that bilingual education team teachers would benefit most from proficiency in all instructional languages rather than relying on the linguistic abilities of one partner.

Organizational and Pedagogical Competences

Despite strong individual organizational competences, we struggled with lesson planning for our collaboration. In other words, our separate lessons on a single class day and across days were not always aligned. Some of this may have been the lack of defined roles, a key difference between the individual and collaborative organizational competences:

I get the sense that there is a tentativeness on both sides to plan. We are sort of just feeling each other out. For example, I asked about time allocation the day before, and she responded that she was wondering the same thing. From my perspective, I am the outsider and not the subject teacher, so she should take on the decision-making role. On the other hand, perhaps she feels like it is up to me, given I was the guest. (Week 1 Reflection Notes)

When an academic subject teacher and language teacher collaborate in bilingual education, I believe the subject teacher should take the lead, since academic content is the priority. My LT partner did not immediately take on this leadership role, leaving both of us with some uncertainty, though she eventually settled into this role after Week 2. Unfortunately, as my partner noted below, this settling of roles did not necessarily translate into cohesive lessons:

中師和外師教學內容需要共備且有銜接性, 不要只是同樣內容用不同語言講而已。

Our first two lessons had some overlap in content, attributed to our inability and inexperience in planning together. One example of such overlap was in the first class day when both of us spent instructional time explaining what research was. Either explaining this in Mandarin or English, rather than both, would have been sufficient. Ultimately, we realized that the organizational competence in team teaching is different from our individual organizational competences. Defining roles and creating cohesion between the two team teachers’ lessons is a critical skill for team teaching. In recognition of this, we had to establish that her role was to teach students concepts related to science, and my role was to facilitate subject-specific communication in English. We made strides toward this by the end of the program, where she helped students understand the concept of reflexes and reaction time, and I helped students communicate the results of the reaction time experiment.

Turning to the pedagogical competence, we additionally found that our individual competencies did not automatically translate to successful team teaching. The LT used more traditional methods (i.e., lecture), whereas I tended toward more “student-centered methodologies” characteristic of modern bilingual education (Pérez Cañado, 2018: 213). At the time, I noted some perceived tension between our styles of teaching:

Her lesson was about presenting information … Mine was about using language with content to complete a task … The teacher expressed skepticism about the connection between our two lessons … I sense she would have liked a stronger connection. Her class mainly was lecturing. I wonder if she expected something similar from mine. (Week 1 Reflection Notes)

I believe the LT's skepticism stemmed from a lack of recognition of the integrated relationship between language and content and how communicative task-based activities can leverage that relationship to promote student learning. At the same time, I also was skeptical toward her traditional methods, though I did not express this to her. While we perhaps initially started with skepticism toward each other's practices, we may have come to realize the synergies the two approaches may have offered:

目標是要學生了解研究報告的架構。由中師先用中文介紹研究報告架構的知識，外師在利用活動的方式讓學生有機會用簡單的英文討論相關的知識。

My LT's reflection suggests that the two pedagogical styles served different purposes and worked together to enhance student learning. Thus, team teaching may not be about sharing the same pedagogical competence; instead, it is about recognizing and leveraging the synergies between different teaching styles. While neither of us expressed this realization directly to each other, our satisfaction that every student successfully achieved our outcome of presenting their science experiment using a combination of English and Mandarin was an implicit communication of our belief in the power of these synergies.

Interpersonal Competence

Switching to a bilingual course can be stressful for students due to non-dominant language proficiency issues and the anxiety that may result. Therefore, the interpersonal competence is critical as it guides teachers to create a safe classroom environment. While there are similarities regarding the interpersonal competence between monolingual and bilingual classrooms (e.g., cultivating positive interpersonal relationships), some differences deserve attention, particularly as they pertain to affect in a non-dominant language environment (i.e., anxiety, motivation, among others). After the first class, I wrote the following:

The teacher asked whether my lesson should be translated for the students. I think there is a time and place for such, but this wasn't it. (Week 1 Reflection Notes)

My co-teacher suggested that students be provided translation throughout the class to help alleviate any discomfort they may be feeling due to receiving instruction in a non-dominant language. My co-teacher's concern for student affect was well-intentioned, as this was the first time for most of the students to have a science class in English. However, my concern was that consistently translating would not adequately alleviate the issue of negative affect students may have felt. Her suggested strategy of consistently translating, in my view, would only serve to avoid the problem of language anxiety rather than address it. Instead, I believe strategies that provide students with moments of language success would serve to build students’ confidence for future language use. In our class, I facilitated this by allowing students to offer non-verbal responses to questions (e.g., thumbs up/down) and by setting an achievable goal for the presentation, where students were only asked to say a minimum of one sentence in English. I believe these small successes could be built on and help contribute to students feeling positive affect in English-speaking environments.

Collaborative and Reflective Competences

Much like in other team-teaching research in East Asia, our collaboration displayed a limited degree of collaborative competence in co-teaching arrangements. We implemented a strict separation arrangement, where one teacher led exclusively for 1 hr. While other arrangements were discussed, my LT felt most comfortable with strict separation. Since neither of us had experience with other co-teaching arrangements (though I was knowledgeable of them), strict separation felt the safest, though perhaps not the most beneficial for the students.

Where we may have fallen short on the collaborative competency, we excelled in the reflective competence. It is notable that we spent 30 min or longer after each class reflecting together, discussing both immediate class concerns and bilingual education in general. Our discussions helped us grow in all of the competences, which led to a stronger collaboration.

We discussed after class how she is seeing bilingual education in a more positive light. She seems to feel [this project] has been a good thing, and she commented that she's “learned a lot” from the experience. I have, too. (Week 2 Reflection Notes)

The experience of team teaching a bilingual class together allowed us to examine our own individual competencies through a new collaborative lens. Our strengths and weaknesses with all seven competences were brought to the forefront, and we learned new ways to approach our teaching practice that we could consider in our future teaching. Although our bilingual team teaching fell short with many competences at times, our willingness to reflect together compensated for these shortcomings, ultimately resulting in a positive team-teaching experience and professional growth.

Scientific Knowledge Competence

Despite being experts in our respective fields, the LT and I found that a basic scientific knowledge competence in our partner's field would have been beneficial. For me, that meant a better understanding of science, and for my partner, an understanding of bilingual education. While our deficiencies affected instruction minimally—as we complemented the other's teaching with our strengths—our lack of scientific knowledge in both domains certainly affected our planning and understanding of our partner's curriculum choices, similar to the collaboration in Relaño-Pastor and Fernández-Barrera (2019) where Sandra lacked the knowledge associated with religion. Thus, it is proposed that team teachers be able to (1) define bilingual education and contrast it with EFL teaching and (2) explain essential concepts in the academic discipline.

Linguistic Competence

My bilingual linguistic competence allowed me to utilize my dominant and additional languages throughout the collaboration. Similar to previous studies, this afforded me opportunities unavailable to the LT, who had limited English proficiency (Carless, 2006; Nix, 2021; Yim and Hwang, 2019). However, being the only bilingual in the partnership put much of the communicating burden on me, particularly during planning and reflection, as we had no option to engage in translanguaging for meaning negotiation. Ideally, team teachers would have a linguistic competence in all instructional languages. While the additional language may not be used for instruction by either partner, team teachers ideally would be able to (3) comprehend a partner's instruction in an additional language and (4) use translanguaging in collaborative planning and reflection.

Organizational and Pedagogical Competences

Our collaboration showed that the organizational and pedagogical competences become more complex in team teaching. Both team teachers should come to the partnership with individual skills in planning and instruction, areas in which NESTs, in particular, were found to be lacking in previous literature (Chen and Cheng, 2010; Luo, 2014; Yim and Hwang, 2019). Beyond this, team teachers must also know how to plan collaboratively—that is, assign roles and align instruction—and realize the synergies between different pedagogical approaches, rather than only acknowledging potential conflicts. Put another way, team teachers should be able to (5) create individual and collaborative lesson plans, (6) demonstrate a variety of pedagogical strategies for academic subject teaching, and (7) describe how different pedagogical styles work together to enhance student learning.

Interpersonal Competence

The change to bilingual education required a different interpersonal competence for both teachers—that is, creating a safe environment where the additional language is used for academic subject teaching. As Chen and Cheng (2010) illustrated, an interpersonal competency in a monolingual setting does not necessarily transfer to a bilingual one. Given my previous experience teaching academic subjects through English in Taiwan, I brought these interpersonal strategies to the collaboration. But for my partner, teaching in a bilingual classroom was very new (as it was for the students), and she had justified concerns about how students might react. The change of environment meant my partner needed additional interpersonal strategies, such as non-verbal response strategies for less proficient or anxious learners. Thus, team teachers should be able to (8) demonstrate various strategies for creating a safe learning environment where an additional language is used.

Collaborative and Reflective Competences

Similar to previous studies, our utilization of the collaborative competence was limited to strict separation (Luo, 2014; Tang, 2016; Yim and Hwang, 2019). While leveraging various co-teaching arrangements would have benefited the students, it must be acknowledged that this takes time to develop (Dove and Honigsfeld, 2017) and was beyond our current readiness as partners. To leverage team teaching to its fullest, team teachers should be able to (9) demonstrate various co-teaching arrangements to support student learning.

The competence of greatest strength for us was the reflective competence. Dove and Honigsfeld (2017) have highlighted its necessity in co-teaching, and several previous studies have shown that collaborators who reflect together have shown resilience in the face of team-teaching challenges (Carless, 2006; Nix, 2021). The same was found in our collaboration. Therefore, team teachers should be able to (10) demonstrate a variety of strategies for individual and collaborative reflection.