Collaborative Bilingual Education in Turkish EFL Context

The European Conference on Education 2018: , Brighton, Birleşik Krallık, 29 Haziran - 01 Temmuz 2018, sa.21881162, ss.307-321

This study investigates the collaborative bilingual teaching based on co- teaching

model by an English language teacher and a subject teacher in a private primary level

school in Istanbul. It explores the administrators’ and teachers’ perceptions and

attitudes. During the bilingual collaborative teaching, each 1st grade class is staffed by

two Turkish native teachers - a monolingual Turkish class teacher and a bilingual

English language (L2) teacher who uses both languages (Turkish and English). The

study is qualitative including semi structured interviews with 4 administrators and 12

teachers as well as observations in two classes. The data was analysed by means of

inductive analysis. The findings reveal the implementation of the programme and the

teachers’ practises based on different co-teaching roles, administrators and teachers’

perceptions including the benefits of the collaborative bilingual education and the

challenges faced in this programme. On the basis of these findings a number of

implications are discussed regarding bilingual teaching in EFL settings.

Keywords: Collaborative bilingual education, Turkish EFL context, co-teaching,

bilingual teacher