2025 Theses Doctoral

Exploring Multivocality in Co-teaching: A Conversation Analytic Study

King, Allie Hope

This dissertation examines how experienced co-teachers collaboratively manage instruction in a kindergarten classroom for gifted students. Using conversation analysis (CA), the study identifies three recurring practices—Teacher-Teacher Display Questions, Cooperative Side Sequences, and Puppet Animation—that exemplify how co-teachers coordinate talk, navigate contingencies, and maintain student engagement. Teacher-Teacher Display Questions entail one teacher asking the other teacher a question in a public way to model curiosity or invite student responses; Cooperative Side Sequences allow one teacher to effectively yet non-intrusively offer individualized support while the other maintains the primary instructional thread; and Puppet Animation entails the teachers using puppets to playfully redistribute authority and sustain attention in cognitively demanding discussions. These practices reveal co-teaching as a dynamic relationship grounded in real-time responsiveness and interactional awareness.

Theoretically, this study contributes to research on collaboration, co-teaching, and gifted education by delineating how co-teachers leverage multivocality to adeptly and fluidly shift instructional roles through finely tuned discursive practices that support engagement, differentiation, and collaborative performance. It extends prior work by documenting the “how” of equal-roles co-teaching, demonstrating how co-teachers share leadership, model social and academic norms, and deliver differentiated instruction for a heterogeneous group of gifted learners. Practically, the findings offer concrete, replicable strategies for professional development and teacher training and may inform collaboration in other institutional settings where co-performance is essential as well.