ELECCION CIMENTACION

The Lack of Formal Structural Devices

Before engaging in a more structured analysis of the genre of team-teaching meetings, two brief points are worth noting. Firstly, the genre structure of team-teaching meetings was not set out in any formal way, such as using agendas, previous minutes or lists of issues to be addressed. There were only very few instances in which documents were used within the meetings observed. In one instance, Denise (T1) of the Hazel Park dyad, brought a list of curricular objectives relating to the new Junior Certificate curriculum to the first meeting for Saoirse’s (T2) information. She also used some informal notes relating to the results of formal assessment of group members. All dyads used class lists or student profiles at various times to structure their discussion of particular issues, such as students’ performances in school-based examinations. They also used students’ examination scripts for this. Overall however, any documents produced during meeting, were used less to structure meetings than to address specific issues within them. The structure of meetings tended to be agreed by participants at the start of each meeting. In general, this was done tentatively thought the use of interrogative (sometimes rhetorical) statements. Rarely were suggestions for the treatment of particular issues refuted, as the following excerpts from the beginning of each meeting at each venue will now show. The first set of excerpts is taken from the initial interactions of each meeting at Hazel Park, where issues proposed for discussion tended to be determined by Denise (T1), who generally used declarative statements to do so.

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4 Denise So a lot has changed since this class went on your timetable [both teachers laugh]

5 Saoirse I can imagine, yeah.

6 Denise So the class are actually called 1F; I think you will have them as 1 Fullerton.

(HP Mtg. 1: Turns 4-6)

8 Denise Well it’s good to have this chance, I suppose, just to have a review, which isn’t always possible … 9 Saoirse Absolutely!

10 Denise To sit …

11 Saoirse A hundred percent; to actually get the time. 12 Denise What did you think?

(HP Mtg. 2: Turns 8-12)

4 Denise Em, so Saoirse, what do you think now that we’re at this stage, would we do it [team-teaching] again? [Laughs gregariously]

5 Saoirse I know, em, well to work with you, as I said, yes; a hundred per cent!

6 Denise Likewise! (HP Mtg. 3: Turns 4-6)

At Maple Lodge, it was Andrew (T2) who proposed a broad agenda for each meeting, and, by implication, the suggested purpose and structure for each. This was interesting in that it was the only venue in which the T2 teacher did so. This was largely accounted for by Andrew’s role as the Special Educational Needs Coordinator in the school, and Claire’s role as a core member of the Special Educational Needs Team that he coordinated.

4 Andrew Will we begin with where we’re at, at the moment and work back from … [there]

5 Claire Work back from that, okay. So, at the moment we just started radio on Friday.

6 Andrew Yeah, and that seemed to go well. 7 Claire Actually it did!

(ML Mtg. 1: Turns 4-9 original emphasis)

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the fact that we’ve had our mock exams [Leaving Certificate Applied] just completed and eh … 5 Claire Yeah, they’re here [the scripts].

(ML Mtg. 2: Turns 4-5)

4 Claire Em, Okay!

5 Andrew So, I suppose in the beginning, we might just think about the planning that has to be done between now and the end of the year, eh, with the LCA.

6 Claire Yeah. Uh-hum. (ML Mtg. 3: Turns 4-6)

At Willow Way, it was Fiona (T1) who made suggestions about what each meeting would address. She used a mixture of questions and declarative statements to do so, such as in the following:

4 Fiona Will we just talk about yesterday first?

5 Meadhbh Yeah, we’ll see what went well yesterday and what didn’t.

6 Fiona Well, first of all the exam question; they seem to be out of their depth with that!

(WW Mtg. 1: Turns 4-6)

4 Fiona Okay, so, first of all exam results! 5 Meadhbh Yeah.

6 Fiona It was good idea actually [to] split the corrections, wasn’t it?

7 Meadhbh Yeah, it was. (WW Mtg. 2: Turns 4-7)

4 Fiona So how did it [the team-teaching initiative] go? 5 Meadhbh Em, I suppose it changed slightly towards the latter

part of the year. Kind of, at the start it was more, it was shared, we were both working together, kind of, as equals …

6 Fiona Yeah.

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The Novelty of Team-Teaching Meetings

The second point to note about team-teaching meetings, before getting into a more detailed analysis of their communicative purpose, is that teachers seemed to have had little previous experience of being involved in any formal meetings of this kind. In fact, data feom principals’ interviews, teachers’ interviews and team-teaching meetings refers consistently to the fact that none of the teachers involved in the study had previously taken part in formally organised team-teaching meetings, even when the time they required for these was minimal, as suggested by Clarie in the following excerpt:

108 Claire Em, I suppose I just wish we did have planning [time] and stuff to ... Meetings!

109 Andrew It makes such a difference really, you know. 110 Claire And they wouldn’t actually have to be that often; it Could be module-to-module, you know?

…

114 Claire Like it really doesn’t need to be a weekly thing, I don’t

think.

115 Andrew Once a month maybe even, yeah, yeah, yeah. (ML Mtg. 3: Turns 108 - 115)

The lack of any prior of experience teachers around team-teaching meetings meant that the communicative purposes and structure of these events was being established and comprehended by teachers for the first time through their involvement with this study. As a result they are likely to have been less adept at using the genres of these meetings in a way that met their own strategic objectives, which tends to be a feature of the expert use of genres in other settings (Bhatia, 2014).