Topic: Co-teaching: is it beneficial to all students, with or without disabilities?

California State University, Long Beach

Introduction

Special education has changed greatly in the last ten years. As a student with a

learning disability and now a teacher who teaches special education, I can tell you we have

come a long way. Special education students used to be serviced in separate classroom

with only other special education students. However, when No Child Left Behind and the

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act were passed, those laws created many changes

for students with disabilities.

The advent of No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2001), with its mandate of more

accountability for all children, including those with disabilities, and its emphasis on

the need for “highly qualified” teachers, has greatly impacted the makeup of today’s

typical classroom. In addition, the reauthorization of the Individuals with

Disabilities Education Improvement Act (2004) continues the emphasis on least

restrictive environment for students with disabilities while supporting the need for

access to the general education curriculum for all students. These laws have led to a

complete paradigm shift in the way students with disabilities are educated and

subsequently how teachers in schools are utilized to meet those needs in an

inclusive education (Murawski, 2009).

Students must now be serviced in general education classes in a new kind of

educational environment called co-teaching. Co-teaching consists of one general education

teacher and one special education teacher in the same classroom. They teach together to

create an environment of academic success. Currently, there is no data or research to

indicate whether co-teaching is effective or not, either in terms of truly helping special
education students succeed, or helping general education students and special education

students alike. There is also very little information about how having two teachers in the

classroom affects student learning, and how students feel having both general education

and special education teachers in the classroom. Do the students feel like they are getting

more help and learning more with two teachers? Do special education students fall behind

in a co-teaching environment? What makes an effective co-teaching environment? What

are the different methods of co-teaching? What are the challenges and benefits of co-

teaching?

There is almost no research out there about how the students feel about the co-

teaching environment. There are many opinions out there about whether co-teaching

provides enough services for special education students, and how well educators think co-

teaching works, but we have no data to say whether it is or is not working. It is my hope to

research this topic and provide much needed data to determine whether co-teaching is

effective for both special education and general education students.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of my study is to see if co-teaching is really effective for all students; to

determine the benefits and challenges to co-teaching, and what is needed for co-teaching to

be effective. I want to know if special education students make progress when placed in a

co-teaching class, and my first goal for this project is to answer these questions with data

and research. My second goal is to find out what is working and what is not working in co-

teaching, and my last goal is to hopefully use this project as a starting point for my graduate

thesis. I will achieve this by creating a co-teaching survey using the Likert rating scale,
which students, teachers, and parents will fill out. The main goal of this research will be to

find out what’s working and what isn’t, from all three groups.

The first part of this project will involve a quantitative approach (such as a survey

using the Likert rating scale), which can be used to get input from students first, then

teachers, and finally the parents. By doing this survey, we can find answers to my research

questions. Since there is no research currently available to compare, this project would

begin the process of filling in the gaps that are missing from co-teaching feedback and data.

There is some controversy surrounding the effectiveness of co-teaching, due to the lack of

quantitative data and research. Most co-teaching material relates to how co-teachers can

work together effectively, so the quantitative hypothesis of this study is to find out, from

general and special education students, general and special education teachers, and

parents, whether co-teaching creates a more effective learning environment by using

different methods of instruction.

Research Questions

1. What are the benefits and challenges of co-teaching?

2. What makes an effective co-teaching environment?

3. What are the different types of co-teaching?

4. Do special education students still make academic progress in a co-teaching

environment instead of a pull out program?

5. What data or research proves that co-teaching is or isn’t effective?

6. What instructional strategies work in a co-teaching environment?

7. Is co-teaching effective for general education students?

teaching?

9. Is co-teaching helping special education and general education students

academically?

10. How do the students feel, both general education and special education, about being

in a co-teaching environment?

Significance of the Study

Currently, there is no data-based research to show if co-teaching is effective for

students. There are individual opinions and studies about the opinions of co-teaching from

a small number of educators, but no one has yet done a study to quantifiably measure the

success of the co-teaching model. Many special educators feel that IDEA has created a mess

for special education students and that students are falling even more behind by being

placed in a co-taught class rather than traditional pull-out classes or other more restrictive

environment for special education students. A study like this is needed in order to look

beyond the teacher’s relationship to co-teaching and find actual data from students,

teachers and parents about whether co-teaching is truly as effective as it was intended.

With this research, the educational community can determine whether co-teaching is a

better environment than pull-out programs, and whether any challenges facing co-teaching

can be fixed or addressed.

Introduction

I started research for this study with an ERIC search to find articles and information

related to my topic on the effectiveness of co-teaching. Unfortunately, while there are many

articles on co-teaching and even some that provide educators’ and researchers’ opinions on

the success of co-teaching, there is no data-based research study that quantifiably answers

the question of whether co-teaching is a more or less effective teaching strategy than a

traditional pull-out or more restrictive environment with only special education students in

the classroom.

To find supplemental information, I looked into general co-teaching articles and

studies, which I believe will help me add context to my study and, if necessary, highlight the

need for a data-based study about the effectiveness of co-teaching. I limited the materials

in my literary review to those articles that addressed the issue of the effectiveness of co-

teaching.
Synthesizing the literature

Teacher reflections on co-teaching a unit of work

This article was an Australian study that looked at the collaborative teaching process

as it related to teaching a specific unit of work (Beamish, Bryer & Davies, 2006). While this

study did involve several teams of educators and classes at three different primary schools,

the results were specifically related to the teachers and how they felt the collaborative

education experience worked. Areas of their study included what teachers thought and felt

about their co-teaching partners, and reflecting on those thoughts and feelings. While this

study can be helpful in getting an overall picture of co-teaching and whether it works for

everyone, it does not include whether or not the students themselves felt and demonstrated

improved academic performance as a result of being in a co-teaching environment which is

a critical factor in determining the success of the co-teaching model. Their study

discovered that teachers worked to “advance co-teaching into whole-of-school practice”

(Beamish, Bryer & Davies, 2006, pg. 3), while my goal is to first determine whether co-

teaching data results justify that goal.

Co-Teaching Experiences: The Benefits and Problems That Teachers and Principals

Report Over Time.

This report analyzed a study that spent three years examining eighteen elementary

school and seven middle school teams of teachers that used co-teaching to support

students with disabilities (Walther-Thomas, 1997). This study, like the Australian study

above, focuses on co-teaching as it’s related to the educators themselves. This research

included “A total of 143 participants (119 teachers and 24 administrators) (Walther-

interviews, school documents, and informal contacts, but did not include an assessment of

whether the students themselves performed better in these collaborative teaching

environments. While this study would also prove useful in determining whether co-

teaching is an effective solution for all concerned, it does not address the fundamental issue

of whether co-teaching works for students, at least beyond the educators’ opinions of

whether it works.

A Meta-Analysis of Co-Teaching Research.

This article, written by Wendy Murawski (2001), one of the most well-known

proponents of co-teaching, addresses the issue of lack of data where student performance

is concerned by analyzing other co-teaching articles. She found that, “Of 89 articles

reviewed, only 6 provided sufficient quantitative information for an effect size to be

calculated” (Murawski, 2001), which reinforces my argument that there’s not enough

quantitative data yet to make the argument that co-teaching is effective and should be more

widely implemented. While this article was particularly helpful in pointing out the inherent

flaws in current available research and the need for a study like the one I’m proposing, it

ultimately does not provide any data on the effectiveness of co-teaching for students either,

which seems to be the one area of research that no study has addressed.

Conclusion

There is ample research and data to be found on the effectiveness of co-teaching as

perceived by educators and administrators. Beamish, Bryer and Davies (2006) studied the

thoughts and feelings of teachers after providing co-taught instruction on a unit. Walter-
Thomas (1997) looked at the benefits and problems of co-teaching over time, also from the

perspective of teachers and administrators. Murawski (2001) pointed out the lack of

quantifiable data when it comes to co-teaching. All of these articles and the other research

I’ve done leads me to believe that in order to make a truly accurate assessment of whether

or not co-teaching is working effectively, a study needs to be done that also quantifiably

measures the students’ response to a collaborative teaching environment. Therefore, the

goal of this study is to provide that first set of data that can be used for that purpose.
 Chapter III: Methodology

Procedure

The first step in the procedure process is to select a quantitative research design.

The best research design for this project is a survey research design because the intent is to

find the trends in a set of data, which makes a survey for many respondents the best choice,

since the data responds specifically to individual questions, and that data can then be

collected and analyzed.

The next step is to find participants for the study. Since I work at a school with a co-

teaching SDC (Special Day Class) science class, a co-teaching RSP (Resource Specialist

Program) Algebra 1 class, and Language Arts 1 RSP and SDC classes, my own school would

be an ideal place to administer the survey. The number of the participants would vary since

classes range from thirty to forty-five students and most students in the co-taught math

class are also in the co-taught Language Arts class, but the number of participants could

potentially be as high as three hundred students.

Once I have received approval from the school administration, I would send a

permission slip (in both English and Spanish to account for any language barrier) to

parents. I would then calculate the number of students who would participate in the

survey based on the number of returned permission slips. Assuming this process didn’t

take longer than a month, my hope would be to administer the survey at the beginning of

the school year, and then re-survey students again at the end of the school year to see if

there was any change in the responses.

creating the survey, I would administer it to my own co-taught class, and then to the other

co-taught classes at my school.

Subjects

The subjects of this study would be students at my all-9 th grade high school campus

in the Paramount Unified School District, which is also a Title 1 school. The population

demographics are: 86% Hispanic, 10 % African American, 2% Pacific Islander and 2% not

White or Hispanic. 42% of parents in the district have not graduated high school, and only

10% have any kind of post-secondary education. The per capita income is $14,143 and

18% of residences live below poverty level, according to the 2009 Census. Approximately

95% of students receive a free or reduced lunch at Paramount. 25% of students are

identified as Limited English Proficient, with an additional 23% considered Reclassified

Fluent and 18% considered Initial Fluent. Paramount’s student population is 10 % Special

Education, 13 % GATE, and 0.01% Migrant Education.

My sampling strategy would be nonprobability sampling because it offers the most

convenience and availability. It also offers the exact characteristics I am looking for. The

sample size would be three hundred 9th grade students from co-taught classes. A larger

sample size is ideal, and the best instrument for a sample size this large would be a survey.

Instrumentation
 The relation of research questions will tie directly to my survey. All questions for

students on the survey will be related to my own research questions and questions that the

education community needs quantifiable data to be able to assess. A survey is the best

instrument to use for such a large survey, but holding interviews is another way to get the

same information. The survey is ideal because it can help me identify trends, behaviors,

attitudes, opinions, and characteristics. Creating an experimental lesson didn’t seem to

really fit what I am exactly looking for; the survey seemed like the best choice.

Since the questions are original and I would need to show the validity and reliability

of my study, I would need to conduct a pilot study before I gave my survey to students, in

order to make sure that the study was reliable. I would do the pilot study at another school

with the same general ethnicity and socioeconomic status, with the same grade level for

two co-taught classes: one math and one language arts. Ideally there would be a total of

sixty-five students.

After the pilot study I would be able to identify which questions didn’t work or if my

questions were too weighted, either in favor of or against co-teaching. I would also be able

to discover if there were any mistakes in the survey, which would help me avoid mishaps

later on when I was working with the actual data for my study. I would collect the surveys,

compute the data, and see if the survey was reliable and had consistent scores. Once

reliability was established, I could look for meaningful data trends. If the pilot survey

accomplished all of those goals, I would then be able to assume that my survey is reliable

and valid to give to students at my school.

Data Analysis
 After I have administered the survey, it would be time for me to score the data using

a single item score for each question and participant. I would then use descriptive statistics

to help summarize the overall tendencies and comparisons. I could use inferential statistics

to answer questions about comparisons, and since I want to compare general education

students and special educations students in three different subject areas (science, math and

language arts), the ANOVA test would be the best test to use. After using the ANOVA test, I

would then place my data into tables to help summarize it most effectively.

How about the teachers and their qualifications and their teaching methods and

how they will do co teaching in practice.

See this

Co-Teaching Styles
Parallel teaching is a style in which both teachers are teaching at the same time. The
classroom may be divided in half and one teacher teaches one half of the room, while
the other teaches the second half. So, they are teaching the same lesson at the same
time. This style is great for large classes because the students benefit from being in a
smaller group.

Team teaching is one of the best teaching styles in the co-taught classroom. When
team teaching, the teachers share the teaching responsibility and may act as a tag
team. For example, both teachers deliver the lesson together. Either teacher can raise
points or “jump-in” at any time. The teachers should bounce ideas off of each other and
raise questions together in this style.

The one teach one drift model should be used occasionally but should not be used
exclusively because students begin to view the teachers as being unequal in the
classroom. In this model, one teacher teaches the lesson, while the second teacher
drifts around the classroom and helps students who need extra attention. This model is
similar to one teach, one observe in which the second teacher may observe students
during the lesson and while they are working and document those observations to better
learn how to teach the students.

Station or center teaching is often used in elementary schools but may certainly be
used in the middle and high school settings. Students work in stations or centers and
the co-teachers may take responsibility for teaching and explaining directions for their
assigned stations. Students benefit by working in groups.

Alternative teaching is when one teacher teaches pulls out a smaller group of students
who need extra help, or students who are advanced and need more of a challenge can
be pulled out. The students in the pull-out group can get extra help or can work on
advanced lessons. This strategy is especially helpful for catching up students who have
been absent. When pulling out special education students, it best to include some non-
special education students so that the special education students won’t feel singled out.

Co-teaching works because all teachers have strengths and weaknesses. In the co-
teaching environment, the students are fortunate because they have the expertise of
two teachers.
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