Practicing Collaborative Teaching With Care: A Literature Review

Abstract

Collaborative teaching models provide support to music teachers, easing isolation and enhancing professional development, which fosters innovative teaching and professional fulfillment. Researchers have found that these benefits occur when educators have positive attitudes about collaborative teaching and choose to develop strong collaborative partnerships. However, music educators prepared to teach in isolation may not understand how to implement collaborative teaching or successfully build a collaborative partnership. Because strong teacher-to-teacher relationships are essential for collaborative teaching to be beneficial, in this literature review I explore music education research on collaborative teaching through Noddings’s care theory. I include caring themes for developing parity, using dialogue and reflection, and implementing modeling, practice, and confirmation. I also provide music educators and researchers with context for understanding the purposes, benefits, and challenges of collaborative teaching in music to guide implementation and inquiry.