Using co-teaching as a means of facilitating interprofessional collaboration in health and social care.

Full Abstract

In this paper we report the findings of a collaborative enquiry on our experience as tutors co-teaching interprofessional collaboration to a multidisciplinary group of undergraduates. We have different professional/academic backgrounds and the student group included health and social work professionals alongside a number of non-professionals. Our data included our perceptions of the co-teaching experience collected by means of our reflective diaries and reflective conversations during planning and after teaching sessions. We also collected data on student perceptions elicited by means of student evaluations and a student focus group discussion. The data illuminate the process of using co-teaching to role model shared learning and collaborative working within the classroom and highlight the importance of carefully planning co-teaching interaction, including the use of humour, tension, different knowledge bases and styles of debate. The deliberate use of the interactions made possible by coteaching enabled us to create an active learning environment that facilitated the teaching of collaboration. Drawing on our experience, we discuss the considerable potential of using co-teaching to role model collaborative working for multidisciplinary student groups.

Author information

Author/s: Crow, Jayne (J); Smith, Lesley (L);

Affiliation: School of Community Health and Social Studies, Anglia Polytechnic University, Bishop Hall Lane, Chelmsford, Essex CM1 ISO, UK.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Journal of interprofessional care (J Interprof Care), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Feb; vol 17 (issue 1) : pp 45-55

Dates: Created 2003/05/29; Completed 2003/06/20; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 12772469, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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