Abstract
There is limited research examining the perspectives of co-teachers on the factors that may influence their selection and implementation of specific co-teaching strategies. In practice, the general and special education co-teachers often rely on the one-teach, one-assist model of co-teaching when collaborating in an inclusive classroom, and they may not be sharing instructional roles, responsibilities, and authority within that model (i.e., there is lack of parity). In an effort to add to the co-teaching literature in this area, the focus of the investigation was on teachers’ perceptions of factors that may impact the sharing of authority and classroom roles (i.e. parity practices) in co-taught classrooms. Four general education and six special education teachers, who were currently co-teaching in middle school inclusive classrooms, were recruited from one school district in the greater Sacramento area. The teachers were interviewed utilizing semi-structured interview questions about the co-teaching practices that they implement and the factors that influenced their selection of these strategies. The key findings of the study were that participating teachers each reported that they had implemented the one-teach, one-assist co-teaching model in their class, and at least one participant noted use of each of the other five co-teaching models. Further, the participants all identified the general education teacher as the lead instructor, and the special education teacher was most frequently tied to supportive roles. The factors identified as influencing the selection of co-teaching practices and parity included teacher, student, classroom, and systemic/organizational characteristics. The implications for practice are the following recommendations: that co-teachers implement a variety of co-teaching models that require each co-teacher to assume instructional roles, and that they alternate instructional roles when using the one-teach, one-assist/observe models of co-teaching. Finally, administrators should focus efforts to allot designated collaborative planning time for co-teachers, offer trainings to encourage co-teaching best practices, institute co-teaching policies that reflect shared responsibility between co-teachers for their classrooms and students’ performance, make co-teaching assignment voluntary and/or allow teachers to select their cooperating teachers to ensure compatibility. Future research could examine the impact of these efforts as well as experiences of students in co-taught classrooms.