Dr. Gene Mehigan:

I shall respond to the questions asked by Deputies Nolan and Catherine Martin. Co-teaching is an interesting idea. Deputy Catherine Martin said that for many years the classroom has been the domain of the class teacher and some teachers would have found the arrival of an SNA challenging. That situation has changed somewhat with the advent of SNAs, resource teachers and co-operative parents in the classrooms.

In response to the question of training, we have thought about how best to approach the matter. One of the blockages is the notion of two teachers standing up and becoming a double act like Mutt and Jeff. That is not what we envisioned originally. We want a gradual release of responsibility to selected teachers in the same school. One might have different levels of teachers. For example, one might teach while the other observes or assists. One could have parallel teaching where the teachers divide the class in two. One could have alternative teaching, which is like station teaching but with different models of teaching. Ultimately, one would work towards two teachers co-teaching in the classroom.

The question on co-teaching is relevant to us because we have thought about the challenges. Let us say there are two teachers in the same school and one is a special teacher while the other is a classroom teacher. We envisage that our own students, during their initial pre-service teacher education period, would work on the scenario. That is the model that we envisage for such teacher training.