The co-teaching. A tool for facilitating progress in teaching-learning processes.

The purpose of this doctoral thesis is familiarising with co-teaching as a methodology that facilitates progress in the teaching-learning processes. Teachers need permanent training to respond quickly to the various circumstances that are detected in the classroom, for example, learning problems, lack of social skills, different levels of assimilation, and above all, diversity. Even though the educational administration has training programs to provide teachers with resources to face the day-to-day challenges in the classrooms, sometimes it is not enough. Co-teaching is a tool that can respond to the diversity that is present in the classrooms on a day-to-day basis. It offers benefits not only for students but also for teachers and the educational centre. Co-teaching is understood as a teaching methodology in which two teachers agree to carry out together the teaching-learning process to a group of students in the same space and time. The question that has guided the study is: In what aspects does the application of a co-teaching model affect students, teachers and the educational centre? and the general objective is to establish the effectiveness of co-teaching in the teaching-learning processes. Through a concurrent mixed methodology, a quasi-experimental design is carried out. The sample consists of 3 different classes from two primary schools in Catalonia. Each class has its corresponding control group. The utilized instruments have been the pretest and posttest, the questionnaire and the interview. The analysis demonstrates important elements of co-teaching that must be taken into account, as well as the benefits and difficulties that its application can generate. A profile of co-teaching staff is elaborated. From the conclusions, it can be deduced that there are fundamental elements that both the teaching staff and the members of the management must take into consideration before applying the co-teaching methodology as they are tightly related to its success. When it comes to learning, it is evident that students do not learn more when co-teaching is applied than when they have a single teacher in the classroom. However, in the second part, other learning reports are exposed, in which the informants state that there is better preparedness and they perceive greater learning through co-teaching. Although the results of the study cannot be generalised, they show a close image that promotes the understanding of the application of co-teaching.