Co-teaching in Queensland Primary Schools: Teacher Reflections.

Abstract

Australian schools have begun to implement a variety of inclusion models, but there is little local research into the effectiveness of these models. Co-teaching strategies have been used for 15 years to accommodate the diverse range of learners in North American classrooms. Co-teaching, an extension of traditional team teaching, has proven to be a successful strategy for increasing collaboration between regular and special educators. A partnership between university researchers and staff at three primary schools has started to introduce co-teaching into primary classroom practice and to study the kind of microprocesses involved in these collaborations. Six mini-teams of regular and special education teachers systematically used a co-teaching strategy to plan, implement, and evaluate a unit of work in classes with diverse abilities and needs across the second half of 2005 (July-November). Five sessions of action learning enabled school teams and university staff to come together in order to share perspectives and to document reflections-on-action. Teacher responses to and reflections about the first three sessions showed changing thoughts and beliefs about roles and responsibilities in regular classrooms.