An Examination of Co-Teacher\u27s Instructional Practices and Social Validity Following Participation in Professional Development

Because co-teaching teams often lack the support to continue to implement the evidence-based strategy of co-teaching beyond initial training and coaching sessions, this project studies the affect of training and coaching on teacher implementation and social validity following participation in co-teaching professional development. The Utah State Board of Education – Special Education (USBE-SES), from years 2012-2019, along with the Utah Professional Development Network (UPDN), from years 2014-2019 provided training, support and coaching to secondary co-teaching teams tied to the content areas of secondary mathematics and secondary English language arts (ELA). This project studied the continued use of instructional components specific to co-teaching models one, two, and three years after participants completed a yearlong training and coaching professional development . The elements examined include (a) continued use of co-teaching, (b) types and frequency of models currently used, (c) the use of co-planning and other forms of collaboration, (d) co-instructing throughout the class period and school year, and (e) the perceived improvement for general and special education students. Participants included secondary (grades 6-12) co-teaching teams from Utah districts and charter schools who participated in the USBE-SES and UPDN mathematics and English language arts (ELA) co-teaching yearlong training sessions between the 2015-2019 school years. Participating co-teachers completed an electronic survey which included questions related to their teaching demographics, the extent to which they were still implementing co-teaching practices described in the USBE-SES and UPDN trainings, and their views of co-teaching. The researcher predicted that the latency between participation in their co-teaching training session and the date of the survey would show less frequent use of co-teaching models. The opposite was observed in the collected data. The 2015-2016 cohort reported the highest mean of implementing two or more co-teaching models during their 2018-2019 school year. The researcher also predicted that co-teaching teams would report a noticeable benefit to students with disabilities (SWD) due to an increase of academic knowledge and prosocial behavior. Survey data showed that the two social validity statements addressing increased academic and prosocial knowledge for SWD were among the highest rated overall and across subgroups. Obtained results will be shared with USBE-SES and UPDN personnel involved in the co-teaching training delivery, so they may choose to incorporate this data on fidelity of implementation post training when designing instruction, support practices and coaching for future co-teaching trainings years