Team Teaching in Elementary and Secondary Schools in Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

Abstract

In many countries, to improve teachers’ and students’ communicative competence in English, team teaching between native English teacher and local English teacher is commonly practiced in schools. In this article, I reviewed team teaching practices in elementary and secondary schools in the four East Asian countries – Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. In particular, through the review of research articles on team teaching, I examined current team teaching practice, its contributions, problems, and suggestions put forth in these articles. The study indicated team teaching was practiced more vigorously in elementary schools than in secondary counterparts. While team teaching contributed to improving teachers’ and students’ communicative competence to some extents, it had a number of problems such as exam-oriented curricular constraints, role conflicts between team teachers, and communication problems. Suggestions included building harmonious interpersonal relationship and provision of on-going, systematic professional development opportunities.