This dissertation presents the results from a mixed methods study designed to understand what beliefs urban middle school general education teachers hold when it comes to supporting students with disabilities (SWDs) in an inclusion classroom including classrooms that implement the integrated co-teaching (ICT) model. The quantitative portion of…

Over the last three years, there have been changes in education such a curriculum, culture, and purpose that has encouraged educators to become more collaborative and modify traditional classroom method of one educator working in isolation to a more team-teaching process. The purpose of this study was to investigate the experiences of teachers…

Mathematical learning is supported by caring teaching, which is complex, political work particularly for white teachers in racially diverse classrooms. To investigate white teachers' understandings of care and its influence on mathematics instruction, I conducted a six-month qualitative study in two racially diverse ninth-grade Algebra 1…

I conducted a single instrumental case study to address the problem of practice in which approximately one-third of students entering the ninth grade for the 2019-2020 school year in the study school district were reading below grade level proficiency. I chose an instrumental case study method because it allows for an in-depth examination of a…

Throughout the years, special education has changed and evolved to best meet the needs of students on IEPs and with diverse learning needs. Teachers are put at the forefront to help students be successful in the 21st century. One way to meet the various learning needs of students, schools have incorporated the co-teaching model. The co-teaching…

Historically, students who are identified with a learning disability have struggled with the acquisition of new material. Co-teaching is a model of instruction in which a certified special education teacher works alongside a content teacher to deliver instruction within an inclusion classroom. This research project used a qualitative methodology…

When special education was first introduced into the general education environment, students were served in separate classrooms. Throughout the years, special education services have evolved and students with mild to moderate disabilities are now educated alongside their non-disabled peers. The foundation of the social interdependence theory is…

The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to describe and understand the experiences of co-teaching all-online through the perspectives of general education and special education co-teachers at the middle school level during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study followed Bandura's social cognitive theory with emphasis on self-efficacy…

The education of students with disabilities has been subject to consistent growth and reform within the United States. Federal acts and initiatives continue to pave the way towards increasingly inclusive educational programs. Mainstreaming, the process of providing students in special education access to the same resources as their similar-grade…

Co-teaching is the practice of general educators and special educators sharing instruction in a general education setting to deliberately meet the needs of students with and without disabilities. Co-teacher research tends to focus on the processes of co-teaching, and little is known about how teachers go about creating a system of interconnected…

This research study was designed to examine the impact of the incorporation of vocabulary instruction and various teacher strategies by a middle school science teachers team on student science achievement. The researcher focused on the teacher preparation of vocabulary word walls and the inclusion of specific words within individual units of study…

The purpose of this study was to determine how placement, professional development, and the years of experience of special education teachers impacted the standardized test scores of special education students. This was done by comparing the type of placement of students, mainstream (80+% of the day), co-teaching, separate classroom (100%) and…

Student achievement in education and inclusive support for students with special needs has been a deliberated topic at the federal, state, and local levels of government. The co-teaching approach aims to provide ways for two teachers to work together to create a more inclusive classroom. The co-teaching approach is also known as co-teaching models…

Researchers have shown that restorative processes in middle school improve adolescents' social and emotional skills during a critical time in their academic development, and educational systems worldwide have developed multitiered systems of support to ensure that restorative processes are integrated into the learning culture. This narrative study…

Co-teaching is a progressive approach to teaching using an inclusive model where all students experience the same lesson while receiving individualized resources to meet personal learning needs. The purpose of this case study was to examine one school district's transition from resource rooms to inclusion using the co-teaching model. The middle…