PEDAGOGICAL COEXISTENCE IN THE COLLECTIVE ORGANIZATION OF TEACHING: A STUDY ON CO-TEACHING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

This article analyzes pedagogical coexistence in the collective organization of teaching within an undergraduate teacher education course focused on active methodologies and co-learning in Natural Sciences. Grounded in historical-dialectical materialism and the historical-cultural approach, the study takes pedagogical activity as its unit of analysis to understand co-teaching as a socially organized practice. This is a case study, with data produced with semi-structured interviews with teachers involved in the planning and implementation of the course, analyzed using Content Analysis procedures. The findings indicate that the collective organization of teaching enabled the constitution of a didactic-organizational unity of the course, sustained by systematic planning, successive revisions, and didactic-methodological and communicational mediations. The findings also reveal processes of professional learning within the teaching collective, as well as mediations between theory and practice, structured through cultural tools, teaching protocols, and systematic study. At the same time, contradictions emerge related to institutional conditions, organizational demands of collective work, and affective-volitional dimensions involved in co-teaching. The study concludes that pedagogical coexistence materializes as a social form of pedagogical activity, constituting a central mediation in the production of meanings, the organization of teaching, and teachers’ professional development.