Students’ Perceptions towards Co-teaching as an Innovative Approach in Teaching Excellence

Abstract

This study argues that co-teaching between two different disciplines, i.e. English and Engineering can contribute to the improvement in the quality of teaching English in general and in enhancing communication skills and class interaction in specific. To investigate this argument, one Industrial Engineering teacher and two English language teachers launched an innovative teaching experience through applying co-teaching in their teaching of English 10322 course for students of engineering and science. The ‘One Teaching-One Assisting’ co-teaching approach was adopted in this study. Co-teaching was employed to a class of 42 students to report the students’ attitudes towards three main domains. More specifically, the researchers investigated the students’ attitudes towards the co-teaching environment, the co-teacher himself and the benefits of co-teaching in improving students’ oral communication, presentation and writing skills. Students’ attitudes were collected via a self-report questionnaire as well as through observations and interviews. The statistical analysis revealed general positive attitudes in the three domains, however, significant differences were only observed among both genders in their attitudes towards the co-teaching environment, in particular, in improvements of their writing skills in favor of females..