Purposes and Benefits of Bilingual Co-Teaching: A Multimodal Pedagogical Approach to Object-Based Instruction

• In Event: 41.042 - Bilingual Co-Teaching Model: Art Gallery Lessons as an Exploration of a Collaborative Interdisciplinary Pedagogical Approach

Abstract

This paper documents a collaborative Spanish bilingual co-teaching model developed by a museum of art in central Texas and the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at a university in central Texas. The study will describe multiple purposes and benefits for the model, which, each semester, pairs undergraduate Bilingual and Bicultural Education (BBE) students who are studying to become teachers with graduate students in art education and art history who are employed by the art museum as gallery teaching fellows (GTFs). Together, the BBEs and GTFs co-facilitate bilingual gallery lessons in the art museum for elementary students from dual language classrooms. Depending on the number of visits scheduled during the semester, the BBEs rotate through assignments as co-teacher, observer, or recorder within designated teaching teams (each assigned to one GTF). Every teaching occurrence offers unique insight into the dynamic of the model, providing multiple points of contact for participants to fully assimilate the pedagogy addressed. The co-teaching model seeks to enrich and deepen art museum learning experiences for bilingual emergent students; provide pre-service teachers with hands-on training for object-based instruction; and transfer a multimodal pedagogy for teaching with art objects into the classroom.

Authors

• Andrea Saenz Williams, di Rosa

• Ariel Spiegelman, The University of Texas - Austin