ADMINISTRATOR AND TEACHER PERCEPTIONS AND ATTITUDES ON THE EDUCATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS OF CO-TEACH CLASSES

This dissertation had as its objective to discover administrator and teacher perceptions and attitudes on the educational effectiveness of co-teach classes. Research questions were designed to address the problem of practice that students with disabilities (SWD) were achieving academics at a rate far below their general education peers. The findings discovered that administrators and teachers had at times divergent perceptions of what others were doing to support their students in the co-teach. These perceptions then influenced their attitudes (specific actions) they were taking to support SWD learning. This divergence of administrator and teacher perceptions was largely influenced by a lack of communication and planning time between both administrators and co-teachers. This study’s recommendations were developed to remedy and mitigate this gap in communication and planning time that is then causing the co-teach classes to be less effective in meeting the educational needs of SWD