Assignment:
100 word response 1 reference
There are a critical number of factors that influence the success of collaboration between special education and general education teachers. To understand those factors, though, we must first highlight the differences between the focuses of a special and general education teachers. According to Ripley (1997), a general education teacher builds their curriculum in alignment with the needs that are dictated by the school system. Special education teachers, on the other hand, builds their curriculum around the unique learning needs of their students.
Successful collaboration is a necessity as the classroom environment moves progressively more towards inclusion and differentiated learning strategies. Approaches that may have been unique to special education teachers in Ripley's article from 1997 are becoming more standardized as studies like those from Koeze (2007) continue to highlight the positive impact of customized learning in the every day classroom. The sign of this mainstream push for more differentiated learning and inclusion in instructional design is arguably a direct result of the collaborative efforts and circulation of strategies between general and special education teachers.
How, though, do we continue to successfully collaborate across the many stakeholders that can serve as critical columns of support for student success? According to Ripley(1997), there are a number of key factors that build these parties towards success. This includes, but is not limited to: time, support, resources, monitoring, and persistence. Each one of these characteristics can cause a struggle with collaborative efforts, if teachers are not appropriately prepared.
However, the most important two factors of those listed are time and support. These are areas that have always been notoriously overlooked for teachers from their administration offices. Ripley (1997) argues that there must be adequate support provided by the school district for teachers to be able to collaborate successfully, or their efforts will be fall apart. This comes in the form of providing adequate collaboration time on multiple tiered levels (classroom, school, and district), as well as designating appropriate trainings in collaboration strategies and inclusion efforts as part of teacher development programs.