Volume: 20  Number: 6  Page: 463–477  doi:10.2167/le627.0

Effective Team Teaching between Local and Native-speaking English Teachers

David Carlessa and Elizabeth Walkerb aUniversity of Hong Kong, China and bHong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong, China

This paper focuses on collaboration between native-speaking English teachers (NETs) and local English teachers (LETs) in Hong Kong secondary schools. It examines some of the strengths and weaknesses of NETs and LETs documented in the international literature. It reviews, in various contexts, schemes where team teaching has been carried out. Using case studies of selected effective practitioners augmented by recent published research, we discuss how native and non-native teachers worked together and how their collaboration impacted on themselves and their students. Our analysis elaborates on some inter- and intra-personal factors facilitating the team teaching, balanced by some of the dilemmas particularly with respect to educational philosophies. The paper concludes by arguing for relationships between particular features of the collaborations and theorised conditions for second language acquisition.

Keywords: collaboration, native-English teachers, non-native English teachers, team teaching

© 2006 D. Carless & E. Walker

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