For well over a year, school shutdowns and sputtered reopenings have tested educators' resourcefulness and resolve. As the new school year begins, many are reflecting on small triumphs and lessons learned from that experience. One practice that proved central to many schools' resolve and resilience during this crisis was teachers' collaboration on…

Special education law has mandated that students with disabilities be served in the "least restrictive environment" possible. This often takes the form of an inclusive classroom, or a general education classroom where students with disabilities learn alongside their non-disabled peers. In some cases, inclusive classrooms are co-taught by…

The purpose of this research was to assess individual elementary teachers' science teaching efficacy utilizing a mixed-methods, exploratory, concurrent case study design and to identify factors which contribute to the growth and development of teaching efficacy of teachers at Apex Elementary School (a pseudonym). The overarching question guiding…

Background/Context: Many urban schools today look to instructional teams as a means to decrease professional isolation, promote teachers' ongoing development, and substantially reduce well-documented variation in teachers' effectiveness across classrooms. Recent research finds that teams can contribute to teachers' development and increased…

This article describes a co-taught course that mobilized a Design Thinking approach in the service of creating a prototype for an actual girls' boarding school in Kenya. The goal of the class was to allow students to engage collaboratively with faculty, with their peers, and with experts "on the ground" to develop the various parts of…

The integration of co-teaching across disciplines in higher education is an approach that enhances the learning experience for both students and faculty. The process of examining material from the perspective of two disciplines contributes to critical thinking skills beyond traditional pedagogical approaches. This article presents a model for…

College readiness is a social construct requiring both student and adult preparedness. This paper used a case study methodology to explore how teaching in an early college program might promote adult college readiness in the instructors. A community of practice, enhanced by a co-teaching model, in two separate high school settings under one early…

School-university partnerships are promising collaborations for better preparing qualified and competent teachers for the realities of today's diverse American classrooms. Research has been conducted on many aspects of partnerships, but few studies have focused on partnered student teaching placements. In this article, a professor and five of her…

Schools that encourage teachers to do excellent work, as Boston Arts Academy (BAA) does, are "professional learning communities." A professional learning community exists when the entire faculty and staff, including the administration, work together towards a shared set of standards and assessments that are known to everyone, including…

This article describes the three-year evolution of a team-taught teacher education class entitled the "Social Contexts of Education" in the setting of an urban high school. The course developed a number of innovative practices, including collaborative instruction by K-12 and university faculty and the development of a parent engagement…

Describes an approach used by the Wayland, Massachusetts, middle school to organizing students into instructional teams. Explains that each instructional team is organized into a "house" named after a significant individual around whom the curriculum and theme for field trips is designed. Highlights the Rachel Carson House activities of…

On Fridays, rather than changing classes, the students at one middle school spend all four team periods with one teacher/adviser as they pursue intensive, independent quarterly learning projects in either science, math, social studies, or English. A program evaluation showed improved student engagement, independent learning, thinking skills, and…

Discusses team-teaching or coteaching in the special/regular education integration approach. Describes the development of integration approaches, the limits of the consultation model, the restructuring demands of coteaching, barriers to implementation, advantages to the approach, and 10 suggestions for developing coteaching in schools. (JB)