Final Defense – Anita Pizzo

Teacher Experiences in Co-Teaching Students with the LTELL Label

May 13 @ 4:30 PM
LSC 710

Co-teaching has increasingly replaced pull-out and push-in models for teaching English language learners (ELLs) in the United States. While there have been many books and articles published about co-teaching models and strategies to implement in mainstream content classrooms, there is a dearth of empirical data on the effectiveness of such models and strategies. The purpose of this study was to examine teacher perceptions of the co-teaching model implemented at the secondary level in a large urban district with a significant number of ELLs, many of whom are considered long-term English language learners (LTELLs). The researcher interviewed English and English language acquisition teachers who participated in the pilot to learn about the experiences that impacted their perception of both co-teaching and students with the LTELL label. Analysis of the data found that while the English language acquisition teachers had an overall positive experience co-teaching and a mostly positive perception of LTELLs, English teachers had a negative view of co-teaching and little awareness of the knowledge required to help LTELLs advance academically.