A meta-synthesis of co-teaching students with and without disabilities

A meta-synthesis of qualitative research was conducted on co-teaching by general and special educators working with students with and without disabilities in primary and secondary general education classrooms. We sought to update the Scruggs et al., 2007 meta-synthesis to discern new knowledge, including co-teaching's impact on students and teachers. Although challenges are identified, co-teachers perceive that co-teaching can enhance their and their students' learning. Findings suggest that school personnel, researchers and policymakers can consider co-teaching as a learning context for co-teachers as well as a dynamic framework that can potentially foster effective instruction for all students in the co-taught classroom.     

Team-reflection: the missing link in co-teaching teams

In literature, co-teaching is mostly defined as an instrumental and pedagogical means delivered by collaborating special and regular teachers, from which students with and without special educational needs benefit in regular schools. The importance of a shared vision on the part of members of co-teaching teams as to what they consider as good education for students is not mentioned in definitions of co-teaching. The authors argue that sense-making by reflection about what can be considered as good education – good teaching and good learning – is essential when co-teachers want to understand or change their practice or relationship with their partner. We reviewed 17 articles about co-teaching teams’ professional development and identified that challenges to co-teachers’ professionalisation mostly were directed to interpersonal and normative aspects of development in co-teaching teams. We elaborate on five distinguished movements that can bring about change in teacher professionalism. These movements correspond to the challenges retrieved from the literature review and can be used to contribute to move toward a new perspective on professionalism of co-teachers. A contemporary definition of co-teaching is proposed because former definitions do not suffice to express the value of constructing a shared vision on good teaching and learning. We argue that team-reflection is the missing link in terms of enhancing normative professionalism of co-teaching teams and recommend that further research should be conducted to value team-reflection as a means to overcome challenges of co-teaching teams.     

Co-teachers’ attitudes towards planning and instructional activities for students with disabilities

Co-teaching is considered a means for improving the inclusion of students with disabilities in mainstream classrooms. This research employs a mixed methods research approach to investigate teachers’ attitudes towards co-teaching practices for students with disabilities in Greek schools. In total, 400 co-teachers completed a survey questionnaire and 10 of them participated in semi-structured interviews, in which they reported co-teaching practices with regard to planning and evaluation activities, co-teaching models, content of teaching and instructional grouping arrangements. The participants stated that the time they spend to plan and evaluate together is insufficient and that they need more time to perform these activities. In addition, co-teachers were found to use their limited time to separate rather than to co-plan or evaluate co-teaching activities. They reported inconsistencies in the rating of co-teaching activities during planning and evaluation. Even though co-teachers approved a specific stance towards all models of co-teaching, they mainly noted that they implemented supportive co-teaching. Also, they stated that they modify the content of teaching for their students with disabilities, but they limit this practice to individual teaching in order to assist these students to overcome specific difficulties. Finally, co-teachers indicated that they prefer to teach the students with disabilities in mixed ability groups rather than to teach them individually out of the class. The results of this research support those of previous studies with regard to the planning needs of co-teachers and the prevalence of the supportive co-teaching model. In addition, our results inform the field about diverse approaches and inconsistencies in delivering the curriculum and the grouping arrangements for students with disabilities. We argue that professional development on the practical implementation of co-teaching and administrative support are necessary to enhance co-teachers’ activities towards the development of an inclusive culture.     

The Old Man and the Sea: Navigating the Gulf between Special Educators and the Content Area Classroom

The special educator in the content area classroom often experiences an ill‐defined role, which can translate into marginalization within instructional settings. Indeed, most students with learning disabilities (LD) receive content area instruction from a general education teacher with the support of a special educator. However, the literacy demands of the respective content areas often present content specific challenges for students with language‐based disabilities and their teachers. To date, proposed content area literacy interventions have not addressed the specific language‐based needs of students with LD. In this article, we highlight the similarities among history, science, English language arts, and mathematics texts from a language perspective, and present strategies specifically targeting students’ background knowledge. We also provide recommendations to researchers and practitioners for improving content area learning.     

Teachers’ experiences with co-teaching as a model for inclusive education

Co-teaching is an instructional strategy that can be implemented by educators in several different ways. This paper considers how frequently co-teachers implement different approaches to co-teaching and what factors are associated with the implementation of these approaches. This study found that teachers most frequently reported implementing an approach to co-teaching in which one teacher designs and delivers a lesson and the other teacher provides individualised support to specific students with disabilities. The approach to co-teaching in which educators co-plan and co-instruct different components of the curricular content occurred the least frequently. The results of logistic regression analyses indicated that structural aspects of co-teaching (multiple years with co-teacher, time spent daily with co-teacher, number of current co-teachers), teacher attitudes, and professional development opportunities (pre-service and in-service) were associated with the use of different approaches to co-teaching.     

Union gives strength: mainstream and special education teachers’ responsibilities in inclusive co-taught classrooms

Co-teaching has gained considerable interest as a means of promoting the inclusion of students with disabilities in mainstream education. Nowadays, there is a consensus among researchers that co-teaching should provide effective education to all students in a mainstream class. This study aims to explore co-teachers’ attitudes towards co-teaching responsibilities in Greek mainstream classrooms. In particular, it examines co-teachers’ attitudes with regard to their non-class-time (planning and evaluation) and class-time (instruction and behaviour management) responsibilities for students with and without disabilities. Four hundred co-teachers participated in this survey study. Overall, our findings demonstrate that mainstream education teachers and special education teachers disagree about their respective class-time and non-class-time responsibilities, and that their role influences their attitudes towards these responsibilities. The study concludes that the different attitudes of co-teachers towards their responsibilities could hinder the development of a shared approach in teaching students with and without disabilities in inclusive classrooms.

Union gives strength

Aesop

(ca. 620-564 BC)     

Elevating Instruction for Secondary‐School Students with Learning Disabilities by Demystifying the Highly Qualified Subject Matter Requirement

The highly qualified mandate of the No Child Left Behind Act and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act has created unnecessary confusion, particularly among secondary‐school special educators and administrators with respect to instruction in core academic subjects. The pursuit of compliance solutions to meet this requirement has generally distracted stakeholders from re‐examining the mission of secondary‐school special education for students with learning disabilities (LD). Because effective subject matter instruction within inclusive classrooms is dependent upon general and special educators capitalizing on each other's areas of expertise, the necessity of requiring special educators to possess a comparable level of subject matter knowledge as the general educator is not only of questionable merit, but often counterproductive. This article poses and examines several fundamental philosophical questions related to the delivery of core academic subject matter to students with LD.     

Collaborative teacher roles in facilitating inclusion: Preservice preparation for general and special educators

Abstract

Collaboration between general and special education teachers has been viewed as important to the successful education of students with disabilities who are served in inclusive classes. The purpose of this study was to analyze and compare the perceptions of a national sample of general and special education teacher educators regarding their perceptions of actual and ideal emphases placed on specific collaborative roles in teacher preparation programs for general and special education teachers. The authors analyzed the data and found significant differences between teacher educator perceptions of the degree of emphasis actually placed on collaborative roles and the degree of emphasis that should be placed on these roles in teacher preparation programs.     

大学教师社会角色论

大学教师作为社会的一个特殊群体 ,具有特定的社会角色。本文从大学教师的社会活动和社会关系出发 ,在分析大学教师的社会地位和作用之后 ,认为大学教师的社会角色是研究者、教育者、知识分子三者的统一体。作为研究者 ,其根本特性是为学术而学术 ;作为教育者 ,其根本特性是热爱学生 ;作为知识分子 ,其根本特性是深刻的社会关怀     

挖掘教育主客体功能做好90后学生网络思想政治教育

在"无处不网、无人不网"的环境下,要做好大学生的网络思想政治教育,需结合学生特点和需求,加强隐性教育,激发教育客体的自主性,同时加强高校思想政治教育队伍建设,丰富教育形式和内容,增强服务性,教育主体不仅需要主动深入网络而且能够将网络思想政治教育与传统思想政治教育有机结合,有效引导学生,及时解决问题,并开展抛题式教育实践,将学生有效引向思政教育网站,达到增强网络环境下思想政治教育实效性的目的。     

Inclusive and exclusive education in Sweden: principals' opinions and experiences

To support the national and international aims of inclusion, special teacher training in Sweden was replaced in 1990 by special educator training. These special educators would supervise the teachers in their school and would not exclusively teach students. The aim of this study was to investigate what the principals of 14 municipal compulsory schools in Stockholm County thought about the organisation and realisation of special education in 1996 and 2006 respectively. According to the results, there were fewer segregated groups in these schools in 2006, but an increasing number of students were placed in segregated groups that were common to several schools or municipalities. Principals at schools with teaching teams usually saw the special educator as a coordinating and supervising resource while others preferred the special teacher function. The former approach led to a more inclusive school and the latter in the direction of exclusion.     

陶行知成人教育思想述要

陶行知是我国现代伟大的教育家、思想家,也是"五四"以后我国最有影响的进步教育家之一。在他提出的教育理论和一生的教育实践中,不仅极其重视年轻一代的普通教育,而且也蕴涵丰富的成人教育思想,尤其在成人教育的价值观、目的观、教师观、学生观、内容观、方法观和管理观等方面颇有建树,至今历久弥新,值得我们学习和借鉴。     

Do different routes to becoming a special educator produce different understandings of the profession and its core concepts?

There are multiple routes to becoming a special educator in Norway. In recent years, bachelor's degree programmes have offered an alternative to the traditional path in which special education coursework is taken as a part of teacher education. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether these different programmes produce different understandings of the special education profession and its core concepts. We surveyed 27 bachelor students and 36 teacher education students using open-ended questions concerning their future goals and expectations and the concepts of ‘inclusion,’ ‘learning disability,’ and ‘special educator’. Teacher education students were more likely to: (a) view inclusion from a broad perspective, emphasizing a sense of belonging and community, (b) define the concept of learning disability from a categorical perspective, and (c) perceive special educators as essentially ‘expert’ teachers for children with special needs. Bachelor’s degree students also emphasized special educators’ role in supporting individuals with special needs, yet were more likely to apply a relational perspective when describing the concept of learning disability.     

How are Developmentally Appropriate or Traditional Teaching Practices Related to the Mathematics Achievement of General and Special Education Students?

Recently, developmentally appropriate practices have been distinguished from traditional practices and have been advocated as one way to reform primary general education classrooms. Relatively little research has examined the efficacy of developmentally appropriate versus traditional practices. In particular, concerns have been raised about the effectiveness of this approach for students with disabilities. This study examined the relationship between primary teachers' implementation of developmentally appropriate and traditional teaching methods and the mathematics achievement of general and special education students. Observations, interviews and questionnaires were used to measure the mathematics teaching practices used with general and special education students. Because developmentally appropriate and traditional teaching practices are often characterized in terms of a continuum, principal components methods were used to generate continuous composite variables that described teacher presentation, materials, grouping, and curriculum. The outcome measure was a curriculum- based measure of mathematics achievement. Principal components results showed that the composite variables most clearly associated with the developmentally appropriate v. traditional continuum were not related to mathematics achievement. Instead, consistent with previous research, achievement was associated with a reported measure of instruction that emphasized mathematical processing and strategy instruction. Further, a reported "laissez faire" method that emphasized individual student choice and treated special education students like general education students was negatively related to achievement, as was placement in special education class.     

The Urban Bridge is a symbol

Response to Intervention (RtI) is a general education initiative that takes place prior to evaluation for placement in special education. Essentially, the first two tiers of RtI require general education teachers to use research-based instruction with all students and then to evaluate the effectiveness of that instruction. Given that the use of RtI as an assessment tool begins in the general education classroom, the following question remains: Are general educators aware of the development and implementation of RtI as a process for assessing and, eventually, possibly placing students into special education? The purpose of this study was to review the literature to answer the following two questions:

1. To what extent is RtI evident in the professional literature of educator groups (teachers, administrators, and teacher educators) who will be responsible for implementing these school practices?

2. What is the nature of the published literature (concept papers, assessment practices, instructional practices, and research) on RtI?

     

技校生自卑心理超常量研究

技校生中具有自卑心理的学生与同龄的中等教育和高等教育学校学生相比较,比例明显超过常量。其超常量的比率应该说与该部分学生所处的学校教育环境是有直接关系。可充分认识这一起常量的特殊群体所造成的负面影响,在技工教育阶段从学校、教师和学生自身三个层面上入手,通过学校教育可及时矫正学生的自卑心理。     

Source interpretation: teaching students with and without LD to read and write historically

We review domain-specific teaching approaches for students with learning disabilities in social studies, then present De La Paz's 2005 historical reasoning strategy so that readers understand the rationale for and have information on each stage of instruction. Next, we highlight the role of self-regulation for the reasoning process. We then turn to describing the role of each teacher (Morales as the social studies educator and Winston as the special educator), first as they collaborate with De La Paz and each other, then as Morales works alone, 1 year later. Implications are given for changes in teaching. The topic of women's suffrage is used throughout the article to highlight the teaching approach and to present student work.     

In your Facebook: Examining Facebook usage as misbehavior on perceived teacher credibility

Teachers sometimes do things that negatively impact their own credibility in classroom settings. One way instructors maintain credibility among students is by keeping a veil between their personal and professional personas. The advent of Facebook presents new challenges for instructors seeking to keep their personal lives private in order to maintain credibility among students. In educational settings, Facebook communications can blur the personal and professional boundaries that students and professors are accustomed to. As such, instructors in higher education sometimes struggle with the implications of ‘friending’ students in the context of social networking. The purpose of this study was to examine whether or not educator usage of Facebook had any impact on student perceptions of instructor credibility. Facebook presence was examined in the context of teacher ‘misbehaviors’ (that is, actions by educators that negatively impact their credibility). A modified version of Teven and McCroskey’s (1997) Source Credibility Instrument was given to a sample of college students (N?=?187) to compare instructors that use Facebook with those who do not. While students appear to be generally accepting of instructor usage of the social tool, some findings suggest that there are probably ways to abuse it in a manner that could lead to negative perceptions of credibility. Ultimately, results from this study indicated that there were no significant differences among student perceptions of instructor credibility based on whether or not an educator used Facebook.     

How are Developmentally Appropriate or Traditional Teaching Practices Related to the Mathematics Achievement of General and Special Education Students?

Recently, developmentally appropriate practices have been distinguished from traditional practices and have been advocated as one way to reform primary general education classrooms. Relatively little research has examined the efficacy of developmentally appropriate versus traditional practices. In particular, concerns have been raised about the effectiveness of this approach for students with disabilities. This study examined the relationship between primary teachers' implementation of developmentally appropriate and traditional teaching methods and the mathematics achievement of general and special education students. Observations, interviews and questionnaires were used to measure the mathematics teaching practices used with general and special education students. Because developmentally appropriate and traditional teaching practices are often characterized in terms of a continuum, principal components methods were used to generate continuous composite variables that described teacher presentation, materials, grouping, and curriculum. The outcome measure was a curriculum- based measure of mathematics achievement. Principal components results showed that the composite variables most clearly associated with the developmentally appropriate v. traditional continuum were not related to mathematics achievement. Instead, consistent with previous research, achievement was associated with a reported measure of instruction that emphasized mathematical processing and strategy instruction. Further, a reported “laissez faire” method that emphasized individual student choice and treated special education students like general education students was negatively related to achievement, as was placement in special education class.