Supporting Co-Teaching Teams in High Schools: Twenty Research-Based Practices

Headnote

Abstract

Including students with special needs in the general education classroom is being widely promoted in the public schools. This practice places a heavy burden on the general educator who is often inadequately trained to meet the needs of such a diverse classroom. Co-teaching has been one of the support strategies used to address the challenges and capitalize on the opportunities for learners with special needs in the general education classroom. This article provides twenty suggestions for high school administrators to consider when implementing co-teaching in order to support the teachers who engage in this promising practice.

Since Public Law 94-142, Education of All Handicapped Children's Act, passed in 1975, public schools have been striving to successfully include all students with disabilities into general education classrooms. As Voltz, Brazil and Ford (2001) explained, however, schools often focused on integrating general and special education students, rather than the systems of general and special education, and a systems integration concept was not seriously explored until the 1980's. With the shift from student to system, there came an interest and desire to provide more effective support for the increasing number of students with disabilities who were being included in general education settings.

Educational inclusion of students with disabilities has been widely promoted in recent years, resulting in ever-increasing numbers of students with disabilities receiving all or nearly all of their services in general education classrooms (Mastropieri & Scruggs, 2001). In each of the age groups, 6-11, 12-1 7, and 18-21, the largest proportions were educated in regular education classrooms for most of the school day. Students receiving services were outside the regular classroom less than 21 percent of the school day (U.S. Department of Education, 2006), which suggests a need for a systemic approach to improvement of student achievement.

Both general and special educators serving students with disabilities are part of collaborative teams working to meet the educational and behavioral needs of students in classrooms. These collaborative teams develop Individual Education Plans (IEP), strategize academic and behavioral interventions and do collaborative consultation. An additional model of collaboration that is gaining attention and implementation is collaborative teaching or co-teaching (Zigmond & Magiera, 2001 ).

Co-teaching has been one of the support strategies used to address the challenges...