1. Estabrook School HSR Feb 26, 2013

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Joseph Estabrook School: Historic Structure Report Team Teaching Philosophy 6 III. Historical Analysis A. Historical Background and Context 1. The Team Teaching Philosophy Team teaching is "an arrangement whereby two or more teachers, with or without teacher aides, cooperatively plan, instruct and evaluate one or more class groups in an appropriate instructional space and given length of time, so as to take advantage of the special competencies of the team members. ,12 The idea of teacher collaboration has been around for centuries. Schools designed to accommodate flexible class sizes were proposed as early as 1849.13 It was not until after World War II, however, that the term "team teaching" was used. The concept was first proposed by Francis Keppel, Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and future US Commissioner of Education, as a way of attracting talented young people to the profession of teaching and addressing the great shortage of teachers. He said in 1964: A decade ago my interests in encouraging new ways of organizing teachers and pupils grew out of a desire to recruit able young men and women into teaching and to keep them in the classroom. Three aspects of the teacher's career seemed to present serious obstacles: the low ceiling in salary, the lack of any clear path to increased responsibility and intellectual growth, and the lack of adult criticism and companionship. These elements appeared to be present in the career patterns of the other professions with which the schools were in competition for personnel. And the schools were not doing well in comparison. 14 Dr. Robert H. Anderson described the inception of the team teaching approach: A small group of faculty members at the Harvard Graduate School of Education sat down together to consider some extremely tentative proposals for school reorganization. These proposals had first been sketched informally by Dean Francis Keppel in a mimeographed memorandum to which reactions were solicited. Finding that the proposals embraced both some exciting theoretical concepts and a promising new structure for school operations, the faculty group developed and refined the Dean's proposals to the point where it soon proved feasible to approach several school administrators and to consider plans for testing the new arrangements. 15 12 David W. Beggs III, ed. Team Teaching: Bold New Venture (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1964), 16. 13 Henry Barnard, School Architecture (New York: Barnes, 1849), 261. As quoted in Judson T. Shaplin and Henry F. Olds, Jr., eds. Team Teaching (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1964), 218. 14 Judson T. Shaplin and Henry F. Olds, Jr., eds. Team Teaching (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1964), x. 15 Robert H. Anderson, "The Organization and Administration of Team Teaching," Judson T. Shaplin and Henry F. Olds, eds., Team Teaching (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1964), 174. Anne Andrus Grady June 2012