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CAUT Policies
Policy Statement on Team Teaching

Definition

“Team teaching” includes any teaching context wherein more than one individual is responsible for the design, delivery and/or assessment of a course, seminar, workshop, presentation, or other teaching endeavour.  Any courses so taught are here referred to as team-taught courses. 

Team-taught courses include those where concurrent sections are taught by different instructors; those where sequential sections are taught by different instructors; and those where multiple instructors engage the same class at the same time.

General Principles

1   
All members of academic staff, regardless of their contract status, enjoy the same workload and academic freedom rights & expectations in respect of teaching a course, regardless of course delivery style or structure, including team-taught courses.

2   
Consistent with this right of all team-taught course instructors to academic freedom and workload equity, team teaching efforts should operate under an explicit acknowledgement of, and a readiness for accommodation to, the inherent possibility of conflicting claims by team members, and by others with a legitimate interest in the team-taught course, concerning the many aspects of course design, delivery &/or assessment. 

3   
Resolution of any conflicting claims should take great care to avoid bias with regard to power imbalances among team members and, in particular, protect vulnerable academic staff from unreasonable pressures.  The resolution process should focus clearly on the pedagogical integrity of the teaching effort.

4   
All involved in team-teaching efforts should be willing participants; that is, participation in team-taught courses should be an individual’s choice, not subject to coercion. Refusal to participate in a team-taught course should incur no penalty or reprisal.

5
Care should be taken to ensure that academic staff participating in team-taught courses receive fair and adequate recognition, credit and evaluation of their efforts. The evaluation mechanisms used to assess team-taught courses and/or instructors must, therefore, be appropriately sensitive to the complexities of coordinating work within a team-taught course.

Team-taught course Preparation

6   
Before their initial deployment, team-taught courses should be cooperatively planned so 
as to ensure a reasonable degree of equivalence among course sections with respect to content; structure; design; course resources; instructor workload; pedagogical approach; assessment methodology; marking schemes & standards; faculty and student workload; the number and style of any assignments, exercises or presentations; all as appropriate to the level and disciplinary area of the course.

7
Team-taught course planning should not seek to impose an identity of teaching activities that are protected by academic freedom, consistent with the corresponding protection of the legitimate interests of students.

8   
All instructors should be involved in all stages of team-taught course planning, regardless of contract status.  The course coordinator should exercise no executive authority in planning team-taught courses.

9   
The team-taught course’s planned nature, structure, delivery and assessments methods should be set out clearly in a public course manual or outline.

10   
Established team-taught courses should be reviewed regularly to ensure that the course continues to conform to the planned structure and content (as in 5 above).


Dealing with problems

11   
Where conflicts arise over the planning or implementation of any aspect of a team-taught course, including workload inequities and/or credit, that cannot be resolved by informal discussion among team-taught course members, any member may request a review of any aspect of the course and/or its delivery and/or its assessment practices. Members should consult with their academic staff association.

12   
Such requests should be in writing, clearly setting out the nature of the perceived problem(s), and submitted to the unit head (Director, Chair, or Dean).  Following any needed clarification of the issues, the unit head should convene a timely meeting of the teaching team.

13   
In the meeting, the unit head should seek to clarify for all team-taught course members the nature of the perceived problem(s), outline the principles that should govern the issue (as set out in ss. 1-4 above), and attempt to guide discussion towards resolution. 

14 
If this should not prove possible, and where necessary, the matter should be referred to the Dean, who should render a timely decision, taking great care to consider all academic freedom issues, any power inequities among the parties to the conflict, the academic mission of the unit and the institution, and all legitimate concerns of students.   The Dean’s decision should be communicated in writing and giving reasons to all members of the team-taught course and, where applicable, to the Director or Chair, within 15 days.

15   
The Dean’s decision should be subject to grievance by any party to the conflict.