Improving Collaborative Teacher Education Research: Creating Tighter Linkages

Although collaborative teacher education programs have grown in number over the past two decades, we still do not understand the ways in which these programs, or the practices in those programs, improve the preparation of inclusive teachers. At a time when teacher education’s viability is being questioned, it is problematic that little information exists about the validity and impact of collaborative programs. To justify collaborative teacher education programs and improve the science of teacher education more broadly, the authors propose a framework for conducting research on collaborative teacher education—one that can be used to analyze current research and inform future efforts. In this article, the authors build a framework for studying collaborative teacher education, emphasizing linkages among theory, innovation, and outcomes. The authors then analyze the collaborative teacher education literature according to this conceptual framework, drawing conclusions about the current state of collaborative teacher education research and making recommendations for the future. Keywords teacher preparation practices and outcomes, collaboration, teacher research The inclusion of students with disabilities in general education classrooms prompted the emergence of collaborative preparation of special and general education teachers in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Pugach, 2005; Pugach & Blanton, 2009). Although the num-ber of collaborative teacher education pro-grams has grown considerably over the past two decades, little information exists about the validity of collaborative teacher educa-tion. The lack of evidence for justifying collaborative teacher education, and teacher education more generally, is disquieting in a climate where colleges of education are being criticized heavily for their inability to prove their worth, and quick routes to the classroom, such as Teach for America, are viewed as equally attractive alternative