In my previous article, I wrote that one of the things I did not understand as a new ALT was that team teaching is not self-explanatory.
At first, that idea surprised me. Team teaching seemed straightforward enough. Two teachers working together toward a shared educational goal. One brings local knowledge, curriculum familiarity, and long-term relationships with students. The other brings different experiences, perspectives, and language resources. On paper, it sounds like an ideal partnership.
Yet anyone who has spent time in Japanese schools knows that team teaching can look very different from one classroom to the next. Some partnerships are highly collaborative and rewarding. Others feel awkward, unclear, or entirely one-sided. In some schools, team teaching appears to thrive. In others, it can feel as though two people simply happen to be standing in the same room.
The longer I worked as an ALT, the more I realised that many frustrations surrounding team teaching stem from a simple assumption: that putting two people in a classroom automatically creates a team.
In reality, effective team teaching is a professional skill. Like any professional skill, it requires training, communication, shared expectations, and time to develop.
The Idea Behind Team Teaching
Before discussing the challenges, it is worth acknowledging why team teaching became such an important part of English education in Japan in the first place.
The idea itself is not unique to Japan. Around the world, schools use various forms of collaborative teaching, co-teaching, and classroom support. In theory, having two educators work together allows students to benefit from different strengths and perspectives.
Within the ALT system, the original vision was ambitious. Japanese teachers would contribute their knowledge of the curriculum, examinations, and local educational context. ALTs would provide authentic language input, cultural perspectives, and opportunities for communication. Together, they would create lessons that neither could easily deliver alone.
When it works well, the results can be impressive. Students see adults collaborating toward a shared goal. Lessons become more dynamic. Teachers learn from one another. The classroom feels less isolated.
After many years in Japanese schools, I have seen examples of team teaching that genuinely improved the educational experience for everyone involved.
The question is not whether team teaching can work. The more interesting question is why it often struggles.
The Training Problem
One of the most surprising things about team teaching is how little formal preparation many participants receive.
Most ALTs receive some form of orientation when they arrive in Japan. Depending on the employer or Board of Education, this may include classroom ideas, cultural guidance, workplace expectations, or practical advice about living in Japan.
What is often missing, however, is substantial training in how to work effectively with another teacher.
The same can be true on the Japanese side. Despite team teaching being one of the defining features of English education in Japan for decades, many teachers receive little formal preparation for working with ALTs. New teachers often learn through observation, experience, trial and error, or by inheriting the practices of colleagues.
This creates an unusual situation. One of the central features of the ALT system is frequently treated as something people will simply figure out as they go.
To be fair, there have been efforts over the years. Some Boards of Education have organised workshops, observations, and collaborative training sessions involving both ALTs and Japanese teachers. Individual schools have also developed excellent local practices.
The challenge is that these efforts are often isolated and temporary rather than systematic. There has never been a single national approach to team teaching training that reaches everyone involved.
As a result, many participants enter the classroom with good intentions but without a shared understanding of what effective collaboration actually looks like.
Different Expectations, Different Realities
Even when training is available, another challenge quickly emerges: people often have very different ideas about what team teaching actually means.
Some teachers view the ALT as a language model who supports activities designed by the Japanese teacher, while others see the ALT as an active classroom partner who helps shape lessons from the beginning. Some expect the ALT to lead classes, while others prefer the ALT to take a more limited role. None of these approaches is necessarily wrong. The difficulty arises when those expectations remain unspoken.
An ALT may arrive expecting a highly collaborative relationship while the Japanese teacher assumes a different division of responsibilities. Both individuals may believe they are acting reasonably while becoming increasingly frustrated with one another.
This is one reason the concept of ESID, or “Every Situation Is Different”, appears so frequently in discussions about ALT work. The variation is not simply a matter of personality. It reflects the fact that schools, teachers, employers, and Boards of Education often interpret the role differently. Team teaching therefore becomes a negotiation as much as a methodology.
The Question of Authority
Another factor that receives surprisingly little attention is authority.
In most professions, effective teamwork relies on a reasonably clear understanding of roles and responsibilities. People know who is responsible for which decisions and how disagreements are resolved.
The ALT system has always been more ambiguous.
As discussed in my earlier article on what “assistant” really means in Japanese public schools, the role was never defined with complete clarity. Different schools interpret it differently, and those interpretations influence classroom dynamics.
In some classrooms, responsibilities are shared openly. In others, the Japanese teacher remains the clear decision-maker. Sometimes these arrangements are discussed explicitly. More often, they develop gradually through experience.
The result is a system where expectations are not always visible to those participating in it. For new ALTs, this can be particularly challenging. Many arrive focused on lesson ideas, only to discover that understanding workplace dynamics is equally important. Effective teams generally benefit from clarity. The ALT system often operates through a degree of ambiguity.
That ambiguity does not necessarily prevent success, but it does make success more dependent on communication and mutual understanding.
Why Relationships Matter So Much
This connects directly to something I discussed in the previous article. Many new ALTs spend enormous amounts of energy searching for better activities, better worksheets, and better lesson ideas. While these things certainly have value, they are not always the factor that determines whether team teaching succeeds.
Relationships matter. Trust matters. Communication matters.
The strongest team teaching partnerships I have observed were not necessarily the most experienced. Nor were they always the most innovative. They were usually the partnerships where both individuals understood what the other was trying to achieve and were willing to adapt accordingly.
That understanding takes time. It develops through conversations between classes, informal discussions in the staffroom, shared experiences, and a willingness to listen. In many cases, the quality of the professional relationship influences the quality of team teaching far more than any particular activity or methodology.
This is one reason why experienced ALTs often become more effective over time even when their classroom techniques change very little. They become better at reading the environment around them.
Team Teaching Is a Skill
One conclusion I eventually reached is that team teaching should be treated as a professional skill rather than an assumed outcome.
For years, many discussions about ALT work have focused on classroom activities. There is nothing wrong with that. Practical ideas are useful. However, activities are only one part of the equation.
Learning how to communicate expectations, build trust, navigate different working styles, and adapt to changing circumstances is equally important.
In fact, one reason I eventually became interested in developing training materials on team teaching through ALT Training Online was because I realised how little guidance existed on the subject despite its central role in the profession. Many ALTs and Japanese teachers are expected to collaborate effectively without ever being shown how collaboration itself works.
The assumption seems to be that team teaching happens naturally. In reality, it is something that can be learned, practised, refined, and improved.
The Surprising Thing
After reviewing well over a hundred studies on ALTs and English education in Japan while researching my book, More Than an Assistant: ALTs, Inclusion, and the Future of Educational Roles in Japan, one pattern appeared again and again. Team teaching was discussed constantly. Sometimes it was celebrated. Sometimes it was criticised. Often it was both.
What stood out to me was that many of the challenges described in the literature were remarkably consistent. Unclear expectations, limited planning time, role ambiguity, communication difficulties, and uneven training appeared repeatedly across decades of research.
Yet successful partnerships appeared repeatedly as well. That is why I no longer view team teaching primarily as a success story or a failure story.
It is a human story.
It involves two people, often from different professional, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds, attempting to work together within a system that does not always provide clear guidance.
Sometimes that process is messy. Sometimes it is frustrating. Occasionally it fails.
The surprising thing is not that team teaching sometimes struggles.
The surprising thing is how often it succeeds.
