Effects of pre-service teachers' collaboration on children's competencies and motivation in (non-)inclusive primary school science lessons

Teachers' collaboration is an important prerequisite for children's academic achievement in inclusive education. There are various challenges in teacher collaboration, with one being difficult personal relationships. Studies on the role of the team composition for children's competence and motivational development in (non-)inclusive education are still missing. Thus, we investigated children's competence development depending on a variation of the team composition. In our study, N = 142 pre-service primary school teachers and pre-service special needs teachers were assigned to one of our study groups. Half of the pre-service teachers could choose their tandem partners and the other half was randomly arranged in pairs. Pre-service teacher tandems planned science lessons and collaboratively taught groups of children in regular or in inclusive settings. On the basis of pre- and post-questionnaires, we investigated N = 804 children's competence and motivational development. Children who were taught by pre-service teachers in freely selected teams showed significant knowledge growth in a test on the subject of renewable energies compared to children who were taught by pre-service teachers in not freely selected teams. The setting (inclusive versus regular) had no significant impact on this effect. Significant differences between the study groups could not be proven concerning children's motivation.