Co-Teaching in the Content Areas - Successes, Failures, and Challenges - Case Study Example

Co-teaching has been described as a service delivery option whereby, certified staff and other educators are more than two or more. The co-teachers contract in sharing instructional responsibility for single students group. The sharing of instructions is primarily done in a single workplace or classroom and the content or objectives that are shared among them are specific with pooled resources, mutual ownership, and joint accountability. However, each and every individual level of participation might vary (Abell et al. 83).Even though collaboration among the providers of service has always been a hallmark in the deliverance of special education since the start, co-teaching, instruction sharing by general education teacher and the special education one or a specialist in general education class including the students with disabilities is seen as a recent and relative application.

As a result of related changes in policies and the recent federal legislation, co-teaching evolved more rapidly as strategies that ensure these students access the same curriculum as the other students while they still receive specialized instructions entitled to them.Abell et al. (85) assert that despite the considerable enthusiasm that is expressed with the ones writing about co-teaching and the ones implementing, co-teaching always illustrates the complexity of studying and conceptualizing special education collaboration.

   Most of the inquiries in co-teaching were emphasizing co-teachers relationships and roles or even program logistics instead of demonstrating the impact on the student's achievements and the other important outcomes, further, the existence of literature that describes co-teaching and offers advice on co-teaching instead of studying it carefully. The factors that contribute to admittedly ambiguous base evidence for co-teaching are as, the emergence of understanding of the vehicle to special education delivery, inconsistencies in the implementations and definitions, lack of professional preparation, and the dilemma that is related to the co-teaching situation in collaborative, supportive school culture.

Co-teaching future might be depending on the increase of quality and quantity research on it and the placement of co-teaching in a larger context of the school improvement and reform.