Collaboration in education is seen as a legal mandate, best practice in teacher practice, and necessary for the inclusion of children with special needs. Over the years, there have been a number of evolutionary incarnations of the collaborative model, each possessing various ingredients identified as important, if not essential, components of a…

La Trobe University, like many Australian universities, states that it values honest academic endeavour (Academic Integrity Policy 2011), and it can provide examples of good teaching practice in the areas of academic integrity, proper acknowledgment and avoiding plagiarism. Rather than relying on the chance that individuals will just develop good…

This paper argues for an alternative approach to quality assurance in New Zealand universities that locates evaluation not with external auditors but with members of the teaching team. In the process, aspects of network theories are introduced as the basis for an approach to quality assurance. From this, the concept of networks is extended to…

Teams are incompatible with the scientific management philosophy underlying traditional curricular and organizational theory. This article examines J. R. Hackman's book "Groups That Work (and Those That Don't): Creating Conditions for Effective Teamwork" (1990), as it illuminates the experience of teaching on a middle school…

An interdisciplinary curriculum model facilitates the development of integrative thinking skills and enhances the quality of undergraduate teaching and learning in five ways. Benefits accrue to both faculty and students from the collaboration of faculty and the joining of disciplines to focus on specific themes or issues. (Author/MSE)

As middle school educators refine interdisciplinary teaming, numerous challenges have emerged, notably the development of interdisciplinary units and personality-compatible teams, design of instruction to challenge honor students while motivating low achievers, and integration of subject areas into thematic topics. As the New Kids pilot project…

Many middle schools use teaming or other models to create smaller teaching and learning units. Too often, schools align these models with characteristics advocated in the literature, rather than focusing on collaborative work environments' effects on teachers' and students' lives. These structures' true value lies in the collaborative work…

This paper reports on the results of an initiative taken by Paterson Public Schools (New Jersey), an urban school district with approximately 24,000 students, to restructure its Title I elementary program. The effort involves engaging Title I and regular classroom teachers in a collaborative teaching model as an alternative to the traditional…

Collaborative teaching offers one strategy for combining efforts of special and regular educators to provide a strong education for all students and avoid special-needs students' isolation from peers. Staffing and scheduling may be a problem at secondary level. Collaborative models require teachers' clear understanding of respective roles,…

Collaboration between bilingual education and regular classroom teachers, drawing on research and experience in special education. Several models for consultation used in special education are outlined: process consultation, used to help the teacher clarify student needs and develop solutions through a prescribed set of activities; the…

A collaborative consultation approach to basic concept instruction with 20 inner-city kindergarten children, which involved intervention by a speech-language pathologist, university faculty, classroom teacher, and physical education teacher, resulted in significantly higher performance on target concepts compared to a control group who received…