Award Date

5-1-2013

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Educational & Clinical Studies

First Committee Member

Kyle Higgins

Second Committee Member

Tom Pierce

Third Committee Member

Susan Miller

Fourth Committee Member

Richard Tandy

Number of Pages

254

Abstract

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) (2001) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA)(2004) call for students with disabilities to be given access to the general education environment. Currently, at least half of all students with disabilities receive more than 80% of instruction in the general education classroom (U.S. Department of Education, 2008). Although there are no direct mandates to use co-teaching, it has become the preferred model of instructional delivery within the general education classroom (Pugach & Blanton, 2011).

General and special education teachers need to be provided instruction on the fundamentals of co-teaching in their preservice and in-service training (Pugach & Winn, 2011). Teachers are often not prepared to co-teach in their preservice education programs nor given the support during in-service trainings. The level and types of co-teaching instruction skills provided in preservice and in-service trainings were explored in this study, by distributing an online questionnaire to licensed general and special education teachers.

The data analysis of the results in this study indicated that special education teachers receive more co-teaching training than general education teachers during their preservice education programs in all six areas (e.g., co-teaching models, co-communication, co-planning/preparation, co-instruction, co-conflict resolution, and co-follow through). According to the data analysis, special education teachers received more training in three categories of co-teaching: (a) co-teaching models, co-instructional skills, and co-follow through skills than general education teachers during their in-service trainings. The data analysis indicated that special and general education teachers receive limited in-service training in the areas of co-communication skills, co-planning/preparation skills, and co-conflict resolution skills.

Keywords

Co-teaching; General education; Inservice training; Mainstreaming in education; Special education; Students with disabilities; Teacher education; Teachers – In-service training; Teachers – Training of; Teaching teams

Disciplines

Education | Teacher Education and Professional Development

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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