Collaboration and Shared Responsibility in Team Teaching Scale (CSTT)

1. Abstract

The Collaboration and Shared Responsibility in Team Teaching Scale (CSTT) (Decuyper et al., 2023) is an empirical psychometric instrument engineered to evaluate core interpersonal and instructional dynamics among educators engaging in co-teaching and team teaching configurations. Developed within the context of primary, secondary, and higher educational settings, the CSTT specifically operationalizes two fundamental dimensions of collaborative pedagogy: Collaboration and Shared Responsibility. During its initial operationalization, the instrument comprised a 20-item pool derived from established instruments—notably the Student Teachers’ Team Teaching Perceptions Questionnaire (De Backer et al., 2021) and conceptual frameworks outlining preconditions for collaborative instructional efficacy (Baeten & Simons, 2014; Vangrieken et al., 2017). Following expert panel content validation and subsequent psychometric refinement via exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, the scale was consolidated into a 15-item inventory composed of two distinct latent factors: Collaboration (10 items) and Shared Responsibility (5 items).

The scale employs a standard 5-point Likert response format designed to assess the intensity of collaborative behaviors and joint pedagogical accountability. Psychometric evaluation in a large sample of Flemish educators demonstrated excellent internal consistency, yielding a Cronbach’s alpha of α = .949 for the Collaboration dimension and α = .879 for the Shared Responsibility dimension. Confirmatory factor analysis utilizing weighted least squares mean and variance adjusted (WLSMV) estimation demonstrated strong structural validity and robust model fit indices: χ²(89) = 108.094, p = .082, χ²/df = 1.213, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = .975, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) = .971, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .028, and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) = .039. Furthermore, multigroup confirmatory factor analysis substantiated configural, metric, scalar, and strict measurement invariance across educators’ professional experience levels, educational sectors, and team teaching frequencies. The CSTT provides a structurally sound, theoretically grounded diagnostic tool for educational researchers, teacher educators, school psychologists, and academic administrators seeking to measure and cultivate co-teaching efficacy.

2. Keywords

Collaboration, Shared Responsibility, Team Teaching Scale, Co-Teaching Practices, Educational Measurement, Teacher Professional Development, Structural Equation Modeling, Teacher Attitudes, Instructional Quality, Psychometrics, Measurement Invariance

3. Authors

The Collaboration and Shared Responsibility in Team Teaching Scale (CSTT) was conceived, validated, and published by a collaborative research team based across educational research faculties in Belgium:

• Aron Decuyper — Department of Educational Studies, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium (Correspondence: [email protected]).
• Hanne Tack — Department of Educational Studies, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium ([email protected]).
• Bénédicte Vanblaere — Expertise Centre for Educational Innovation, Artevelde University of Applied Sciences, Ghent, Belgium (ORCID: 0000-0002-2036-4560; [email protected]).
• Mathea Simons — Department of Training and Education Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium ([email protected]).
• Ruben Vanderlinde — Department of Educational Studies, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium (ORCID: 0000-0002-4912-3410; [email protected]).

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Collaboration and Shared Responsibility in Team Teaching Scale (CSTT) is to provide an empirically validated, fine-grained diagnostic and evaluative instrument that captures the socio-relational and operational realities of educators engaged in team teaching. Team teaching involves two or more teachers working together to plan, execute, and monitor instructional activities for a shared group of students. Although educational institutions globally promote co-teaching models to facilitate inclusive education, differentiate instruction, mitigate professional isolation, and enrich student engagement, the actual pedagogical implementation of team teaching varies tremendously in depth and fidelity. Prior instruments frequently conceptualized collaboration as a unidimensional, general disposition toward collegiality or focused solely on pre-service teacher practicum environments. The CSTT was specifically designed to capture the structural realities of team teaching as enacted in authentic, multi-level educational settings.

In both research and practical school contexts, team teaching can degenerate into superficial division of labor, characterized by parallel teaching or instructional fragmentation, wherein one educator acts as a passive assistant while the other assumes primary responsibility. The CSTT addresses this diagnostic challenge by operationalizing collaboration not merely as spatial co-presence, but as an intersubjective dynamic rooted in professional safety, mutual trust, and reciprocal psychological support, alongside joint systemic accountability for instructional outcomes. By separating and measuring the distinct constructs of Collaboration (the relational, communicative, and affective processes) and Shared Responsibility (the functional, systemic, and co-owned accountability for curriculum, evaluation, and student development), the scale enables researchers to assess whether co-teaching partnerships are achieving true co-generative learning or remaining superficial arrangements.

In applied educational research, the CSTT enables longitudinal investigations into how collaborative patterns mature over time, how collaborative self-efficacy influences burnout and professional turnover, and how school organizational climates shape teacher teamwork. For teacher educators and school administrators, the tool serves as a reflective instrument for mentoring partnerships, professional learning communities (PLCs), and targeted continuous professional development initiatives. By identifying discrepancies between perceived collaboration and actual shared ownership over student outcomes, school leaders can provide targeted institutional support to scaffold high-functioning collaborative cultures.

5. Psychological Construct

The CSTT operationalizes two correlated, yet distinct, latent psychological constructs: Collaboration and Shared Responsibility. These constructs encapsulate the relational mechanisms and joint agency necessary for complex collaborative teaching practice.

Collaboration

The Collaboration construct reflects the relational, communicative, and interpersonal ecosystem established between co-teachers. Rooted in psychological safety, interpersonal trust, and professional synergy, this dimension captures the subjective experience of partnership in the shared instructional space. It encompasses the extent to which colleagues perceive each other as competent resources, maintain open lines of dialogue, offer reciprocal emotional and professional scaffolding, and minimize competitive posturing. Within the CSTT, collaboration is defined through ten specific operational manifestations:

• Reliability and Reciprocal Availability: Feeling confident that one can turn to their co-teaching peer with instructional queries, curricular dilemmas, or emergent classroom challenges (Item C1).
• Instructional Complementarity: Experiencing an operational synergy where individual pedagogical strengths, personality traits, and pedagogical styles enhance overall instructional execution (Item C2).
• Emotional and Professional Scaffolding: Providing socio-emotional buffering against stress, role ambiguity, or classroom behavioral challenges, alongside substantive instructional and pedagogical feedback (Items C3, C4, C7).
• Relational Trust and Mutual Respect: A deep-seated psychological belief in the benevolence, competence, and reliability of the co-teacher, paired with unconditional professional dignity (Items C5, C6).
• Reflective Transparency: Engaging in candid, non-defensive discourse regarding classroom triumphs and instructional failures, characterized by an ongoing openness to self-examination and constructive criticism (Items C8, C9).
• Egalitarian Focus (Absence of Interpersonal Competition): Consciously avoiding status-seeking, defensive posturing, or instructional dominance within the learning environment (Item C11).

Shared Responsibility

The Shared Responsibility construct reflects joint pedagogical ownership, shared accountability, and distributed agency regarding core instructional tasks. Distinct from general interpersonal friendliness, shared responsibility requires that co-teachers dissolve individual boundaries of instructional jurisdiction to co-own both the preparatory phases and ultimate outcomes of teaching. This construct addresses the practical question of who holds accountability for the academic and holistic trajectory of the students. The CSTT measures shared responsibility across five critical instructional phases:

• Co-Design and Preparation: Mutual conceptualization, curriculum planning, and resource development prior to classroom instruction, ensuring equal contribution to lesson design (Item SR1).
• Joint Student Assessment: Collective construction, grading, and diagnostic interpretation of formative and summative assessments (Item SR3).
• Interactive Instructional Facilitation: Shared ownership during real-time classroom execution, guiding group dynamics, scaffolding tasks, and addressing learning barriers collaboratively (Item SR4).
• Post-Lesson Evaluation: Joint reflection on the pedagogical efficacy of completed lessons, analyzing the structural coherence of teaching materials and pacing (Item SR5).
• Student Learning Outcomes: Mutual psychological accountability for academic mastery, holistic achievement, and academic growth among all assigned learners (Item SR6).

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture of the CSTT integrates foundational literature on teacher collaboration, distributed leadership, social interdependence, and communities of practice. It draws directly from the continuum of teacher collaboration articulated by Vangrieken et al. (2017) and the comprehensive team-teaching preconditions identified by Baeten and Simons (2014).

Social Interdependence Theory

At its core, the CSTT is anchored in Social Interdependence Theory, originally formulated by Kurt Lewin and extensively expanded by Morton Deutsch and David and Roger Johnson. Social interdependence exists when the accomplishment of each individual’s goals is affected by the actions of others. The CSTT measures positive interdependence (cooperation), wherein teachers perceive that they can attain their pedagogical goals if and only if their co-teaching counterpart also succeeds. Under positive interdependence, individuals engage in promotive interaction: mutual assistance, exchange of resources, trust development, and low anxiety. The Collaboration subscale operationalizes these promotive interactions, while the Shared Responsibility subscale operationalizes structural positive interdependence across curriculum planning, instructional delivery, and evaluation.

The Continuum of Collaborative Practice

Vangrieken et al. (2017) established that teacher collaboration exists along a broad spectrum, ranging from low-level joint activities (e.g., informal storytelling, operational information exchange, and independent parallel work) to high-level collaborative arrangements (e.g., team teaching, co-design, joint lesson study, and collective professional identity). Team teaching occupies the deepest end of this spectrum, demanding high structural interdependence and profound autonomy loss in exchange for collective efficacy. Baeten and Simons (2014) synthesized empirical research on student teachers and experienced educators, identifying essential preconditions for team teaching success: compatible pedagogical philosophies, non-competitive psychological safety, structural joint preparation time, and reciprocal feedback. The CSTT operationalizes these preconditions into a coherent psychometric framework, testing whether educators operate in genuine high-level team collaboration or superficial parallel co-presence.

Distributed Cognition and Collective Teacher Efficacy

The scale is further grounded in theories of Distributed Cognition and Collective Teacher Efficacy (Goddard et al., 2000). Distributed cognition posits that pedagogical intelligence and instructional decision-making do not reside in the single mind of an isolated teacher, but are distributed across interactions, instructional tools, and joint actions in the classroom environment. Shared responsibility represents the cognitive and affective convergence of this distributed system: when both educators accept collective responsibility for learning outcomes and student well-being, feelings of isolation diminish, and collective efficacy—the shared belief in a team’s combined capability to execute courses of action required to produce given educational attainments—is strengthened.

7. Validity

The psychometric evaluation of the CSTT demonstrates rigorous evidence of content, construct, and structural validity across multiple developmental and analytical phases (Decuyper et al., 2023).

Content and Face Validity

The initial pool of 20 items was developed through a combination of item adaptation and novel construction. Five items on collaboration were adapted from the Student Teachers’ Team Teaching Perceptions Questionnaire (STTPQ; De Backer et al., 2021), seven collaboration items were formulated based on Baeten and Simons’ (2014) qualitative preconditions, four shared responsibility items were derived from Vangrieken et al. (2017), and four new shared responsibility items were created to assess student outcomes, well-being, and lesson evaluation. A formal expert review panel comprising specialists in educational sciences, psychometrics, and teacher training assessed the initial item set for syntactic clarity, domain relevance, content breadth, and linguistic appropriateness. Based on expert feedback regarding redundancy and conceptual ambiguity, one item was dropped, refining the pre-testing pool to 19 items.

Construct and Structural Validity

Construct validity was evaluated using a two-stage factor-analytic framework. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on an initial calibration sample confirmed that the items clustered cleanly into a two-factor structure. To maintain strict psychometric standards, items with factor loadings falling below .70 were flagged for removal; four items (C10, SR2, SR7, and SR8) failed to meet this criterion and were excluded. The remaining 15 items demonstrated robust structural validity, cleanly delineating the latent dimensions of Collaboration (10 items) and Shared Responsibility (5 items).

Measurement Invariance

A critical test of an educational assessment tool is whether it measures constructs equivalently across diverse professional demographics. Decuyper et al. (2023) conducted multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) to test for measurement invariance across three primary contextual variables:

• Teaching Experience: Novice vs. experienced practitioners.
• Educational Sector: Primary education, secondary general, secondary vocational/technical, and tertiary education.
• Team Teaching Frequency: Occasional co-teachers vs. intensive daily/weekly co-teachers.

The MGCFA supported configural invariance (equivalent factor structure across groups), metric/weak invariance (equivalent factor loadings across groups), scalar/strong invariance (equivalent item intercepts across groups), and strict invariance (equivalent residual item variances across groups). This establishes that observed differences in CSTT mean scores across different cohorts reflect authentic differences in collaborative practice rather than measurement artifact or psychometric bias.

8. Reliability

The CSTT displays exceptional internal consistency and measurement precision. Reliability analysis conducted on the 15-item finalized scale yielded high reliability coefficients well exceeding standard psychometric thresholds (α ≥ .80 for basic research; α ≥ .90 for high-stakes screening):

• Collaboration Subscale (10 items): Cronbach’s alpha reached α = .949, indicating excellent inter-item relatedness and minimal measurement error in assessing the interpersonal, reflective, and supportive components of team teaching.
• Shared Responsibility Subscale (5 items): Cronbach’s alpha reached α = .879, demonstrating strong internal consistency across items assessing shared accountability for planning, instructional execution, assessment, and academic achievement.

The item-total correlations across the finalized set of items remained high, confirming that each item makes an independent, meaningful contribution to its designated latent domain. Invariance tests across educator groups further confirmed that the reliability of the scale remains stable regardless of teachers’ years of professional service or the specific grade levels taught.

9. Factor Analysis

The dimensionality of the CSTT was investigated using a combined exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory (CFA) structural modeling approach (Decuyper et al., 2023).

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

The initial 19-item version was evaluated via EFA using principal axis factoring and oblique rotation, acknowledging the expected theoretical correlation between collaborative dynamics and joint responsibility. The eigenvalues and scree plot inspection confirmed a clear two-factor structure. The authors applied a conservative item retention threshold, requiring a primary factor loading of ≥ .70 and low cross-loadings. Four items failed to meet this threshold and were dropped:

• C10 (Collaboration item exhibiting factor loading < .70).
• SR2 (Shared responsibility item exhibiting factor loading < .70).
• SR7 (Shared responsibility item exhibiting factor loading < .70).
• SR8 (Shared responsibility item exhibiting factor loading < .70).

The resulting 15-item scale featured 10 items loading strongly onto Factor 1 (Collaboration) and 5 items loading onto Factor 2 (Shared Responsibility).

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

To confirm the two-factor model, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis was conducted using Weighted Least Squares Mean and Variance Adjusted (WLSMV) estimation, which is well-suited for ordinal Likert-type response data. The empirical data demonstrated an exceptional fit to the hypothesized two-factor structural model, with fit indices meeting or exceeding all contemporary thresholds (Hu & Bentler, 1999):

• Chi-Square (χ²): 108.094
• Degrees of Freedom (df): 89
• p-value: .082 (non-significant at the .05 alpha level, indicating no statistically significant discrepancy between the sample covariance matrix and the implied model covariance matrix)
• Relative Chi-Square (χ²/df): 1.213 (well below the recommended 2.0 or 3.0 ceiling)
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .975 (exceeds the .95 benchmark for superior model fit)
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .971 (exceeds the .95 benchmark)
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .028 (90% CI [.000, .044]; well below the .05 threshold for close fit)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .039 (well below the .08 threshold)

Psychometric Fit Index	Empirical CSTT Value	Standard Academic Benchmark	Model Fit Assessment
χ² / df	1.213	≤ 3.00	Excellent
p-value	.082	> .050	Superior (Exact Fit Supported)
CFI	.975	≥ .950	Excellent
TLI	.971	≥ .950	Excellent
RMSEA	.028	≤ .050	Excellent
SRMR	.039	≤ .080	Excellent

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Collaboration and Shared Responsibility in Team Teaching Scale (CSTT)
• Authors: Aron Decuyper, Hanne Tack, Bénédicte Vanblaere, Mathea Simons, and Ruben Vanderlinde (2023)
• Instrument Type: Self-report psychometric questionnaire / Likert inventory
• Target Population: In-service and pre-service educators participating in co-teaching, team teaching, or paired instructional environments across primary, secondary, and higher education
• Languages Available: Dutch (Original development language); English (Author-validated translation)
• Total Item Count: 15 items in the finalized instrument (originally 20 in the preliminary conceptual pool, 19 in pre-testing)
• Factor Structure / Subscales:
  • Collaboration Subscale: 10 items (C1, C2, C3, C4, C5, C6, C7, C8, C9, C11)
  • Shared Responsibility Subscale: 5 items (SR1, SR3, SR4, SR5, SR6)
• Response Format: Items are rated using a 5-point Likert scale.
• Administration Modality: Paper-and-pencil self-report or computer-assisted online survey (typically completed in 5 to 8 minutes)
• Scoring Procedures:
  • Subscale scores are calculated by averaging item responses within each subscale, yielding a mean composite score ranging from 1.0 to 5.0 for each domain.
  • Higher scores on the Collaboration subscale indicate higher levels of mutual trust, professional safety, reciprocal support, and non-competitive reflection.
  • Higher scores on the Shared Responsibility subscale reflect greater shared ownership and distributed accountability for curriculum design, real-time instruction, student assessment, and academic achievement.
  • All 15 items are positively phrased; no reverse-scoring is required.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Year of Formal Publication: 2023
• Copyright & Ownership: The authors (Aron Decuyper, Hanne Tack, Bénédicte Vanblaere, Mathea Simons, and Ruben Vanderlinde). Published under an open-access Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license in Education Sciences (MDPI).
• Usage Permissions: The CSTT may be freely used, adapted, reproduced, and administered for non-commercial research, academic inquiry, teacher training, and educational evaluation without prior written permission or royalty payments, provided appropriate bibliographic citation is given to Decuyper et al. (2023).
• Commercial Exploitation: Commercial reproduction, monetization, or incorporation into closed-source proprietary software requires explicit formal authorization from the copyright holders.
• Associated Fees: No fee (Free public access for academic and educational purposes).
• Primary Corresponding Author Contact: Aron Decuyper, Department of Educational Studies, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium (Email: [email protected]).

12. References

• Baeten, M., & Simons, M. (2014). Student teachers’ team teaching: Models, effects, and conditions for implementation. Teaching and Teacher Education, 41, 92–110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2014.03.010
• De Backer, F., Tack, H., Simons, M., & Vanderlinde, R. (2021). Exploring student teachers’ team teaching practices: The development and validation of the Student Teachers’ Team Teaching Perceptions Questionnaire (STTPQ). Teaching and Teacher Education, 106, Article 103433. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2021.103433
• Decuyper, A., Tack, H., Vanblaere, B., Simons, M., & Vanderlinde, R. (2023). Collaboration and shared responsibility in team teaching: A large-scale survey study. Education Sciences, 13(9), Article 896, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13090896
• Goddard, R. D., Hoy, W. K., & Woolfolk Hoy, A. (2000). Collective teacher efficacy: Its meaning, measure, and impact on student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 37(2), 479–507. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312037002479
• Hu, L. T., & Bentler, P. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 6(1), 1–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705519909540118
• Vangrieken, K., Dochy, F., Raes, E., & Kyndt, E. (2015). Teacher collaboration: A systematic review. Educational Research Review, 15, 17–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2015.04.002
• Vangrieken, K., Grosemans, I., Dochy, F., & Kyndt, E. (2017). Teacher communities of practice and continuous professional development: The preparation for team teaching. Educational Research Review, 21, 23–37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2017.06.002

13. Items of the Scale