Keywords

special education, mathematics, collaborative teaching, co-teaching

Abstract

This study explored the co-teaching practices occurring within four middle school mathematics classrooms and the influence of video discussions on each co-teaching team. The study took place within three middle schools in central Florida. The study provides a clear picture of the current status of middle school co-taught mathematics classrooms. The research results were inconclusive in that the key components of co-teaching were not observed (co-planning, co-instructing and co-assessing) and the findings were similar to past co-teaching research indicating mixed results. Overall, concerns that emerged from the study were a lack of heterogeneous classrooms, clarity for the role of the special educator, inquiry-based based instruction, and individualization for behavioral and instructional needs. Encouraging findings were that teachers were willing to communicate to create richer content, instruction and assessment. In addition, one team showed overall growth and promise related to effective practices. From triangulation of the data teams were growing in the areas of communicating with each other, clarifying roles, building teacher relationships, and discussing student achievement. The hope for effective co-teaching lies in teams being given time to plan, dual preparation, and co-professional development to more effectively meet the needs of low achieving students and students with disabilities in mathematics classrooms. The findings from this study implicate that for co-teaching to be successful teachers need heterogeneous classrooms with both teachers having strong content knowledge, yet with clarity that the special educator's role is to provide individualized strategies for behavior and instruction while the general educator's role is to lead the content instruction. When this level of co-teaching emerges, perhaps further research will not be necessary.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2008

Advisor

Dieker, Lisa

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Education

Department

Child, Family, and Community Sciences

Degree Program

Education

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0002294

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0002294

Language

English

Release Date

September 2008

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

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