Building collaborative special and general education relationships: A pre-service intervention with course and field components

Within teacher education programs, the preparation of general and special educators has often been separated due to differences in the skills each is expected to master (Pugach, Blanton, & Boveda, 2014). With the mandate of inclusion in the IDEA (20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(5)(A)), as well as the increasing implementation of inclusive practices in schools, there has been a desire to shift towards greater integration of general and special education teachers, both in training and in service (Pugach, et al., 2014). This study examines responses to a collaborative project completed by pre-service general and special education elementary teachers. Pre-service teachers took a course together on inclusion and worked cooperatively to implement an intervention and complete progress monitoring for focal students. The course and implementation assignment were designed to support teacher collaboration. Coding data from the pre-service teacher’s implementation assignment and reported student outcomes and individual interviews show the positive impact of the collaborative experience on pre-service teachers ability to align interventions with student needs as well as pre-service teachers’ satisfaction with collaboration and desire to engage in it in the future