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.