Interactional role negotiation among co-facilitators in an online design workshop

ABSTRACT

Research has demonstrated the important role of co-teacher communication and planning, but relatively little is understood about co-teacher interactions during the act of teaching itself and how these interactions relate to educators’ positionings and ongoing identity development. This paper presents a case study of interaction between two co-facilitators of a team of Japanese youth during a week-long, synchronous, online workshop on human-centred design. One co-facilitator had several years of experience, and the other was a first-timer. Using positioning theory and discourse analysis, we show that the co-facilitators developed a relatively stable pattern of instructional authority delegation, or the social order that guides who has rights and responsibilities over which forms of instructional decision-making. We describe the delegation between the co-teachers in this study as involving ‘instructional content authority’ and ‘instructional language authority’, established through interactions of positioning early in the workshop. Then, we examine an interview activity later in the workshop that seemed to disrupt the established pattern. This work extends research on co-teacher communication and teacher learning to understand co-teacher interactions during live teaching, with potential implications for co-teacher preparation and the learning of less experienced co-teachers.

KEYWORDS:

• Co-teaching
• positioning theory
• teacher learning
• social order and interaction

Acknowledgments

We would like to give thanks to Kazuaki Iwabuchi, Mayumi Kuze, Shawana Munir, Sofia Suarez, and Monica Woo for their support transcribing, logging, and anonymizing the data. We would also like to thank the reviewers for their contributions.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no competing interests for this study. Kijima and Yang-Yoshihara have complied with the conflict of interest disclosure requirements at their academic institutions. Kijima and Yang-Yoshihara are co-founders of SKY Labo, a non-profit organisation based in Tokyo, Japan.

Ethics statement

Kijima and Yang-Yoshihara received IRB approval at their institutions (University of Toronto, Office of Research Ethics, #00039481; Stanford University, Administrative Panel on Human Subjects in Non-Medical Research, #57085) to conduct this study and collect human-subjects data. Classen and Vea received a determination of not human subjects research (Pennsylvania State University, Office of Research Protections, #STUDY00015970) for the use of de-identified data provided by Kijima and Yang-Yoshihara. Consent documents were emailed and completed online to adult participants and parents of minor participants prior to participation. Minor participants assented to research prior to participation. All non-consenting or non-assenting participants were placed into a non-recorded group.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Japan Fund Grants from the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, Victoria College, Institute for Gender and the Economy at the Rotman School of Management, and the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto.