Special education within urban, public schools does not always look the same from state to state, district to district, or teacher to teacher. More specifically, teacher knowledge, abilities, and experiences also oftentimes differs in inclusive classrooms that service both students with disabilities as well as students without disabilities. These…

The main orientations of education policy with a view to the next decade include, inter alia, promoting educational innovation and verifying it through further professional development of teaching staff and exploring the effectiveness of learning. One of the possibilities of achieving this goal is co-teaching and its forms, which are constantly…

This article discusses special education teachers' initial training within public policies establishing teaching students with special educational needs and disabilities in mainstream classrooms. Based on the question of how special education teachers' initial training in Chile is responding to inclusive education policy regulations, we describe…

The deployment of Teaching Assistants (TAs) to support learning has been the subject of much critical debate, including the particular concern that TAs too often becomes a less skilled replacement for the teacher rather than acting as an additional source of support. Despite efforts to encapsulate the TA's contribution to learning within specific…

The roles of teachers and related service providers (e.g., speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists) are vital to skill acquisition and meaningful access to the general education curriculum for students who have been identified as having significant or extensive support needs. However, often delivery of…

Coteaching is an inclusive practice used to provide students with disabilities the opportunity to learn alongside their peers in the general education classrooms. Two certified teachers (general education and special education) deliver substantive instruction to a heterogeneous group of students in the cotaught classroom. However, there were…

This article investigates the practices of effective collaboration and co-teaching among Special and General Educators as it relates to the social justice concept of inclusion. Data was gathered through interviews, faculty surveys, student surveys, and personal journal reflections. The study explores the key components to reshaping the role of a…

Social studies instruction in upper elementary school (Grades 3-5) is important for building foundational content knowledge to equip students for the secondary school curriculum. Due to numerous school initiatives and demands on the time of teachers, social studies instruction can play second fiddle to reading and mathematics instruction, which…

Despite nationwide advances in special education service delivery practices, disparities exist between the educational outcomes of students with disabilities versus students without disabilities. There is often disparity in teachers' roles and instructional practices in coteaching classrooms, as well as in their pullout resource classroom…

Special education teachers, through a national survey conducted in 55 rural districts, provided information on the positive and negative aspects of teaching in rural schools. The 203 special educators were asked what they liked best about their position and what they found challenging. Some of the themes identified in the analysis centered on…

Although collaboration among service providers has been a hallmark of special education almost since its inception, co-teaching, the sharing of instruction by a general education teacher and a special education teacher or another specialist in a general education class that includes students with disabilities, is a relatively recent application.…

Any given year, general and special education teachers may find themselves managing and supervising one or more paraprofessionals within their classrooms. Paraprofessionals represent a growing and important segment of personnel used to provide support for students with severe learning or behavioral needs in self-contained and inclusive settings.…

Filled with down-to-earth ideas, suggestions, strategies, and techniques, "The Co-Teaching Book of Lists" provides educators with a hands-on resource for making the co-teaching experience a success. Written by educator and popular teacher trainer Kathy Perez, this book gives educators a classroom-tested and user-friendly reference for the…

Atlantic High School, a small rural school in the state of Virginia, offered co-taught inclusion classes as an optional placement for student with disabilities for the first time in the 2008-2009 school year. While inclusion was thought to afford multiple benefits for students with learning disabilities, it also presented instructional challenges…

In the current era of educational reform and accountability, co-teaching has emerged as a popular and widely implemented service delivery model for students with special needs. The intent of this inquiry was to examine the roles and responsibilities assumed by the elementary special educator during the practice of co-teaching. Using naturalistic…