A special educator’s beliefs and practice: Reflections on co-teaching a unit of work.

Abstract

A special education teacher participated in a co-teaching team with a Year 6 classroom teacher as part of a larger research project on collaborative practice involving six teams in three primary schools. She reflected on designing a science unit of work and teaming with the regular educator and on co-implementing the unit by parallel teaching. She also completed two extra activities for an independent study for her master of education. Her ongoing reflective log of this educational process contained her thoughts and feelings about external events through the project and her internal responses to those events. She also considered the effects of her co-teaching experiences on her beliefs and practices as a special educator. Specifically, she sorted teacher belief statements (Rimm-Kaufman, 2003) before and after co-teaching this unit of work. Her personal account identified key aspects of the collaborative process and revealed changes in her pattern of belief and practice.