Collaborative Teaching between NESTs and NNESTs in Taiwan

Collaborative teaching between native English speaking teachers (NESTs) and local non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs) has become an increasingly common phenomenon in elementary schools in East Asian countries. In Taiwan, NESTs are being recruited to co-teach with local NNESTs in order to provide students with opportunities to cultivate communicative competence in English as well as intercultural sensitivities. Nevertheless, co-teaching itself is no simple task, not to mention the collaboration between teachers of different nationalities and professional development backgrounds. This study is an attempt to describe the experiences of co-teaching between NESTs and NNETs in Taiwan and examine their (or lack of) effectiveness from the perspectives of both types of teachers. The backgrounds of all the NESTs in Taiwan will be first reported. Then, based the questionnaire findings collected from representative NESTs and NNESTs teaching at schools around the country, the collaborative teaching models and practices will be described. By synthesizing the answers by the two groups of teachers, the effectiveness of co-teaching as perceived by them is analyzed. The field notes and interview results with the NESTs in seven schools are then used to triangulate the questionnaire findings. Finally, possible approaches for effective co-teaching will be discussed.