Collaboration Among Special and General Educators

"To succeed at teaching diverse populations, teachers need to be able to demonstrate and engage in collaboration. The principal aim of this study is to illuminate how public middle school teachers in both general and special education perceive and describe their experiences with collaboration in the context of including students with varying abilities and challenges in the general education curriculum and setting. Data were collected from sixteen volunteer co-researcher participants using a long interview format. In the analysis of results, themes and subcategories indicate that teachers know about collaboration and come to their work every day expecting to collaborate. Participants describe positive experiences and factors promoting successful collaboration, as well as struggles and conflicts relating to collaboration. Results suggest that teachers learn how to teach students with varying abilities and challenges through an informal ad hoc type of collaboration. There are significant benefits resulting from collaboration for both teachers and students. Implications for practice include giving serious consideration to pre-service and in-service teacher education programs to incorporate modeling and teaching collaboration. Also, public schools need to seriously consider developing and sustaining teacher professional development led by teachers with an increased emphasis on teacher collaboration."--Abstract.