ABSTRACT
Representative or otherwise, these random comments serve as a reminder that many American teachers and administrators view the introduction o f team-teaching with mixed feelings. This is hardly surprising. For one thing, the organizational changes which are loosely lumped together in the name o f team-teaching answer to no set pattern and cannot be reduced to any rule o f thumb. For another, the rationale behind these changes is often unclear, and the literature which purports to outline it less than convincing - ‘a curious mixture o f hortatory confidence and unsupported optimism’. Where team-teaching has been tried out - and the
6s
latest (1966) estimate indicates that something like three out o f every ten pupils in the U SA are affected in one way or other - the vast majority o f schools have scarcely got beyond the initial stages o f planning. In nearly every case they are still feeling their w ay towards a new modus vivendi, and doing so on a trial and error basis. Even the much-publicized Norwalk Plan, initiated in 1958, has not advanced beyond the proving stage. Not only are the existing plans highly tentative, they are so diverse that it is not obvious how any one o f them can be taken as a prototype. Since conditions vary from place to place and from staff to staff, the problems facing each school are sui generis, so that no single, common solution is possible.
