EFFICACY OF CO-TEACHING ON LEARNERS’ PERFORMANCE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN INCLUSIVE EDUCATION IN KADUNA STATE OF NIGERIA

Abstract

This study is premised on investigating the efficacy of co-teaching on learners’ performance in English language in inclusive education in Kaduna state of Nigeria. Co-teaching is a delivery instruction method where “two or more professionals blend group of students in a single physical space”. Co-teaching appeared in the literature in the early 1990s as a way to better address the needs of special education students. There are several different models of co-teaching which include one teaches, one observes, one teaches, one assist, station teaching, parallel teaching, supplementary teaching, alternative or differentiated teaching, and team teaching. Co-teaching also has a lot of benefits for the students or learners as well as the teachers. Inclusive education is a philosophy that advocates equal opportunities for all children regardless of whether they have a disability or not. It is primarily about restructuring school culture, policy and practice so that it responds to the diversity of students in the locality. It has its advantages and disadvantages. This study focused on the efficacy of co-teaching on learners’ performance in English language in inclusive education at Nabeela Academy in Kaduna, Nigeria. Experimental design was used to generate data for analysis. The study constituted of two groups, an experimental group (x) and a control group (-x) of JSS III students. They were exposed to a pretest and a posttest in English which was the instrument used for data collection. Simple percentage, mean and standard deviation was used to analyze the research questions and independent sample test was used to test the hypothesis. From the analysis of data, the findings revealed that, there was no significant difference in the pretest scores of learners and the posttest scores after being exposed to co-teaching. The findings also showed that the correlation and t cannot be computed because the sum of case weights is less than or equal to 1. This imply that because there was only student in the control group, a male, the statistical tool used in analysis could not analyze the data because the value was just 1. However, the result showed a mean difference of 7.500. This means that the female learners who constituted the experimental group (x) performed far better than the male in the control group both in the pretest and posttest. There was no statistical data to measure the collaborative performance of teachers through co-teaching on English language. However, the difference in the mean score of the student in control and that of the experimental groups reveals that interaction of teachers’ collaboration in the experimental group affected the students positively.

Based on the finding of this study, it concluded and recommended that co-teaching has a more positive impact on learners’ than solo teaching (one teacher in the class). The study also revealed that the interaction between gender and co-teaching is positive. It was recommended that teachers, when properly equipped are able to implement the co-teaching model thereby increasing the academic performance of the learners.