Final Results

Question 1: There is an atmosphere of cooperation in the classroom

All the special educators agreed or strongly agreed, while a little over a third of the general educators disagreed or strongly disagreed. This is a red flag that there is tension in some of the co-teaching classrooms, but perhaps without the special educators knowledge. Hopefully doors of communication can be opened and the root of the problems can be addressed.

Question 2: You and your team teacher effectively communicate with each other

After seeing the discrepencies from the first question, it was clear to see that the teachers were not communicating (at least not about the issues!). The results to this showed the majority of both general and special educators feeling like there WAS effective communication-- a little mind boggling.

Question 3: The workload is appropriately distributed between you and your team teacher

And here is where we start to see where the problems lie... All special educators agreed or strongly agreed (one was neutral) that the workload was appropriately distributed. However, the majority of the general educators disagreed or strongly disagreed. This makes me think that roles are not clearly defined. Expectations of what each teacher should be responsible for are not clear.

Question 4: Conflicts within the team are resolved quickly

Everyone seemed to be a little closer to the same page with this question. All special educators shared positive feedback, and the majority of the general educators did also.

Question 5: Expectations are high for all students

All special educators strongly agreed, the remaining agreed. Over 75% of the general educators agreed or strongly agreed. This was reassuring.

Question 6: Your disciplinary approach is collaborative

Here is where we see another glaring discrepency. Most special educators and general educators actually agreed that their disciplinary approach is collaborative. However, its is clear that in some classrooms it is not. Those who disagreed almost match up perfectly between the special educators and general educators. Makes you wonder if they're on the same team!

Question 7: You and your team teacher have sufficient time to plan together

I was surprised to see that most special and general educators felt like they do! In the literature we read we found that this is often a common complaint. I wasn't sure what to make of the many "neutral" responses to this question though...

Question 8: Special Education students benefit from co-teaching

THIS was alarming. Over 75% of the special educators agree, but about 66% of the general educators disagreed or strongly disagreed. The whole point of co-teaching is to include special education students into the general education classroom. If they aren't benefiting... something needs to be fixed! Clearly the attitudes are different on both sides.

Question 9: General Education students benefit from co-teaching

I thought it was interesting that as a whole more special and general educators felt like the general education students were benefiting from the co-teaching model than the special education students. In a lot of literature teachers often complain that special education students distract or hinder the general education students. But when comparing the special ed and general ed teachers attitudes, once again more special educators feel like students are benefiting. They clearly have different views.

Question 10: You consider your team teaching experience to be successful

This was kind of interesting. All but 1 special educators agreed (1 strongly disagreed). This is what I kind of expected based on their overwhelmingly positive reponses throughout the survey. The general educators were split 50/50 between strongly agreeing and strongly disagreeing, with very few hanging in the middle ground.

Overall it is clear that the co-teachers in this school need additional professional development on co-teaching. They need clearly defined roles and expectations. And they need to start voicing concerns, because it appears as though the special educators have no clue that anything is wrong!

Book Club

I finished Heaton's book, Teaching Mathematics to the New Standards: Relearning the Dance. I found it to be an easy read and could relate to many of her struggles with the new math curriculum. I have struggled with the curriculum in Clarke County, Investigations. It is difficult to teach differently than I learned math. When I was in school I was taught an algorithm and that was that. We didn't ask questions. We didn't know how or why it worked, we just knew that it worked. The whole point of Investigations is for children to explore and to develop an "algorithm" that works best for them. After a period of exploration then a teacher can present one of many ways to solve a problem while stressing that there are multiple "means to an end". Like Heaton I am most apprehensive of students learning the "wrong" thing. What if they think something is a pattern when really it is just a fluke that it worked? I struggle with when to jump in and "correct" a student and when to probe deeper to analyze the student's understanding.

As far as considering this substantial research, I'm on the fence. I think Heaton went through many appropriate measures with documenting her experience through journals, interviews, video taping. But at the end of the day it was her experience. And experiences are different for everyone! Kind of like I wonder if students will mistake something that isn't a pattern to be a pattern I wonder if some things that occured in Heaton's experience are just part of her experience and not necessarily things that can be applied to everyone.

Research

I received the co-teaching surveys we sent out to middle and high school teachers with experience co-teaching. The results are a little shocking to me. I thought they would be overwhelmingly positive, but this is not the case. Our group was particularly interested in comparing the attitudes of general and special education teachers. So far the findings seem to show that as a whole, special education teachers have more positive things to say about co-teaching. The general education population that was surveyed seems split 50/50 for "is it working?" I found this very interesting.

I also found it interesting that out of the 22 surveys 5 teachers thought co-teaching helped the general education students MORE than the special education students. Now 5/22 isn't a huge ratio, but it is far more than I expected. I would assume that people would have the mindsight that co-teaching only benefits special education students and may even hurt general education students. It was interesting that this handful of teachers saw the exact opposite.

I am now in the process of "number crunching" and trying to determine number scales for each question we asked. I am anxious to see the final results!

I really enjoyed the article we read for last class about the women feeling isolated after receiving an education. One of my classmates made an excellent point that even if we, in American, come from an area where education isn't necessarily valued, we have the opportunity to take our education and get out. We may have to return to some awkward Thanksgiving dinners, or deal with the occassional not seeing eye-to-eye with a family member, but we are not expected to live our daily lives the exact same way we did BEFORE we received our education. Our education is typically a springboard to bigger and better things. For these women, however, they are constantly being judged and feeling alone. And there's no where for them to go. Even their marriage prospects as affected since many men do not want to marry an educated woman. It made me really grateful to live in a country that values education for women.

Our research project has been, in a word, frustrating. It makes it especially difficult when we rarely have all of our members in class together. I know I have been sick a few nights, too, but I'm not sure if we've all been in more than 2 classes together. We know we want to research co-teaching, and the plethora of articles that we have read has provided us with an understanding that co-teaching has many benefits, but teachers seem to be lacking adequate training. We were originally going to read these articles and code them for key words and find overriding themes. Due to the lack of respectable research on co-teaching though, it has been difficult to find the statistics and an acceptable number of studies to use. In class last week we decided to switch gears and interview teachers at a school I am close to through e-mail questions. We are currently developing these questions on a 1-5 scale in order to easily assess the information.

Would it be appropriate to have questions on a 1-5 scale AND questions there were open-ended that we could code? How many teachers should we interview? We were thinking 10 would be a good number, would you agree? Since we are doing these interviews through e-mail how should I attain a signed IRB form?

Co-Teaching

I am currently pulling articles and analyzing co-teaching models in classrooms across the United States. My findings so far have been mixed. Some teachers, students, and parents strongly believe it is beneficial to all students-- with and without disabilities. Test scores have risen, behavior problems have decreased, and students have formed relationships with their peers (with and without disabilities) that will help them have a successful life.

On the flip side of the coin some teachers are frustrated and feel like it isn't working. They feel as though they don't know their role in the co-teaching process. They feel that communication is poor between their co-teacher. However, the overriding theme on this side is that they still have hope. Almost all of these teachers who feel like it currently is not working, believe that it CAN. They want more training and better communication. They believe that with these ingredients, co-teaching can succeed.

I'm still trying to find more statistical data about how many schools claim to be "co-teaching" and "what the numbers show" about test scores and behavior problems within these schools.

School Choice, Research

After reading school choice I am just as unsettled about the issue as I was when I started. I grew up with neighborhood schools and thankfully lived in a diverse suburb outside of Houston which harvested a diverse school experience. However, throughout my experience as an undergrad and beyond in UGA’s education program, I have witnessed some highly segregated schools solely based on neighborhood attendance zones. The lower socioeconomic class can typically only afford homes in a few areas around town, and all those areas tend to feed into the same school(s). I don’t agree with this, but then on the other hand Athens-Clarke County has had the same result with school choice and they are therefore reverting back to neighborhood schools! The authors of the books suggested that Athens-Clarke didn’t have enough structure with school choice and that is why their model failed. I found myself frustrated that the only conclusion I could draw was “we’ll never know until we try.” The unknown is frightening and often assumed to be worse than the current situation. I wonder how “bad” things will have to get before we decide to take a risk.

For our research project we are planning on looking through articles about the benefits of co-teaching. We are taking a quantitative and qualitative approach. On the quantitative side we will look at the numbers the articles give us such as improved test scores percentages, etc. On the qualitative side we will look to see what children who are in co-taught classrooms are saying about their experience. Ajay suggested going through each child's quotes and pulling out words that are repeated. For example I would make a tick mark for every time a child says he or she is happy. This sort of transforms the qualitative to quantitative material. However, we will also include some direct quotes; because I think numbers are powerful, but voices and personal testimonies tug even harder on the heart strings.

Research

February 25, 2009

I am struggling with interpreting data. I’m struggling with the basics of interpreting tables and graphs and trying to see the point that is being made in writing come through in mathematical form. Also, in class last Wednesday we viewed software that helps compute data. While certainly a helpful tool to plug in some numbers and be spit back an “answer,” I am at a loss as to what all the variables mean. The highest level of math I ever completed was Pre-Calculus and I barely skated by with a C. Math has never been my strong suit. Numbers and abstract representations do not get processed and instead get lost inside my head.

Even with these struggles I am enjoying reading about the benefits of a co-taught classroom. I have found higher test scores for both special education and general education children who are in a co-taught classroom. I have also found an improved quality of life for special education students, and I could argue general education students as well. I’m not sure if “quality of life” can be measured with mathematical terms. Therefore would one write two separate research papers one comparing co-teaching and test scores and one teaching co-teaching and quality of life? Or is it acceptable to include both sets of “data” even though they cross quantitative and qualitative boundaries?

February 11-- Class and RefWorks

I’m very thankful my group decided to research a topic that I am also interested in. We are going to research the effects co-teaching has on test scores and behavior. I am especially passionate about this topic because I have a sister who has cerebral palsy. I have been immersed in the fight for equal rights for people with disabilities from a young age. These equal rights include equal educational opportunities. I am interested to see if co-teaching really does help not only students with learning disabilities, but students who are a part of the general education population, too.

I decided to complete my reference library on the topic of co-teaching to see if there were any good articles to help me begin my research. I was surprised at the almost 200 results that ERIC generated. I think I found some good articles to begin with. I also really enjoyed how easy it was to site these articles thanks to RefWorks. After a few clicks of a button the bibliography was generated for me. I can remember the days of high school and even English 1101 where I slaved over the APA or MLA book trying to figure out how many spaces went after a period! I appreciate that the citations are now a stress free process allowing me to focus more on my research.

February 4, 2009-- Class

This week in class we discussed the movie Miss Evers’ Boys. I could not imagine being Miss Evers. It would be too great of a struggle for me to carry such a heavy secret. It certainly enlightened me that I do not know enough about research policies to enter into the field of research today. I struggle greatly when things are not clear. In order to conduct a research experiment I would need more information about my rights and the rights of my research participants. I would also need some clear boundaries and information about what to do in certain situations.

Also in class tonight, Ms. Cohene from the UGA Library talked to us about research. I really appreciated that she took the time to do this. It was very beneficial for me to hear how to go about finding research materials; I was clueless before! I’m looking forward to beginning our research project now that I feel more comfortable about where to start. Although I now have some information about finding resources, I’m sure I will still be utilizing the chat option with a librarian for additional help!

January 28, 2009-- Class

Jan 28, 2009

I really enjoyed the website we were shown during class tonight: map.measureofamerica.org/maps.aspx. It was a nice visual of quantitative research. It displayed “measurements” that could help me know the area I teach in compared to other areas. After class I played around on this website further and discovered some interesting facts. For example, I found it interesting that the average teacher salary in Georgia is $48,298 when the base pay for Georgia is around $29,000 for initial T-4 certification. I would assume there must be many teachers in Georgia with higher degrees in order to obtain this high average. However, when I clicked on “Graduate degree” Georgia is in the middle bracket with 9.5% of teachers. I also didn’t really understand how Georgia could have 27,161 people classified as homeless, but also have 33,870 homeless youth registered in school. Are there different means of classification for these two groups?

Also, during class we discussed the importance of class size for certain grade levels. Ajay told us that current studies show “class size matters for younger grades, but there is a diminishing impact as grade level increases.” I wonder why we are raising class size to thirty students if class size has been proven to be detrimental on the elementary level! Thirty students to one teacher is a ridiculous ratio. How can we ever improve students’ comprehension of knowledge if we cannot provide them with the individualized attention they need? I understand budget cuts and not having enough money, but is that any reason to sacrifice a child’s education? Georgia is already at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to test scores and plenty of other educational issues. It frustrates me when Georgia does something so backwards, like raising elementary class sizes, in order to cut corners with money. Raising class sizes is not fair to teachers and certainly not fair to the children.

Furthermore, I really enjoyed the opportunity we were given tonight to transform statements into research questions. It was nice to practice and to see all of the aspects that need to be thought of when forming a question. A question can neither be too broad nor too narrow. It cannot be biased and it has to be researchable. When forming a question I must also think about my audience. I liked that no two groups formed identical questions. It made me open my eyes to more research possibilities.