The effectiveness of collaboration between general and special education teachers in mainstreaming, 1999

The present study investigated the occurrence and effectiveness of collaboration between 105 general and special education teachers in mainstreaming. The research participants in this study were voluntary elementary, middle and high school teachers who taught in a rural county adjacent to a major metropolitan area Three research questions were proposed and analyzed to examine the degree of effective collaboration between these two groups ofteachers: (1) How effective is collaboration between general and special education teachers? (2) Is it important for general and special education teachers to collaborate when mainstreaming students with special needs into the general curriculum? (3) To what degree are general and special education teachers presently engaging in collaboration? A demographic data sheet and two sociometric questionnaires were designed to measure the level of present and desired occurrence and perceived effectiveness of collaboration between the general and special education teachers. Questionnaires were distributed and collected from the teachers at their respective schools. Results were analyzed using percentile measures, frequency data and T-tests for group comparisons. While there were no significant group differences obtained in this study, trend data comparisons indicated the following: (1) the degree of collaboration between general and special education teachers was quite effective; (2) both general and special education teachers denoted the importance of collaboration when students with special needs are mainstreamed into the general curriculum; and (3) general and special education teachers were not engaging in collaboration as much as they desired to do so in the future While generalization is limited, the overall conclusions indicated that academic effectiveness would be increased if general and special education teachers spent more time collaborating on individual education programs (IEPs), student progress, behavior concerns and general issues related to students with special needs. It was also concluded that school system personnel would benefit from training and development programs that are designed to enhance communications between all educators, and general education teachers' skills would be greatly enhanced from in-service training designed to help them better understand and teach students with special needs