Collaborative Bilingual Education in Turkish EFL Context

Abstract

This study investigates the collaborative bilingual teaching based on co- teachingmodel by an English language teacher and a subject teacher in a private primary levelschool in Istanbul. It explores the administrators’ and teachers’ perceptions andattitudes. During the bilingual collaborative teaching, each 1st grade class is staffed bytwo Turkish native teachers - a monolingual Turkish class teacher and a bilingualEnglish language (L2) teacher who uses both languages (Turkish and English). Thestudy is qualitative including semi structured interviews with 4 administrators and 12teachers as well as observations in two classes. The data was analysed by means ofinductive analysis. The findings reveal the implementation of the programme and theteachers’ practises based on different co-teaching roles, administrators and teachers’perceptions including the benefits of the collaborative bilingual education and thechallenges faced in this programme. On the basis of these findings a number ofimplications are discussed regarding bilingual teaching in EFL settings.Keywords: Collaborative bilingual education, Turkish EFL context, co-teaching,bilingual teacher