Collaborative Teaching of Inclusion Groups 1

Running Head: COLLABORATIVE TEACHING OF INCLUSION GROUPS.

Perceptions about the Effectiveness of the Collaborative teaching of Inclusion groups in Social Studies.

Mark M. Diacopoulos

2 April 2006

Submitted in partial Fulfillment of ECI 635

Instructor: Martha Maurno, M.S. ED

OldDominionUniversity

Norfolk, Virginia

Chapter One: Nature of this Study

Introduction

Inclusion is a controversial topic in education. It relates to many values and ideologies that sometimes appear at odds. Inclusion encompasses issues about the worth of an individual within society. It relates to how society views people with disabilities. Inclusion has a political and financial impact, as well as an educational impact on all who are affected by it.

Because of the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), inclusion is necessary in all schools. Students with disabilities must be placed in what it terms as the “least restrictive environment possible” (IDEA, 1997). This law has ensured that the placement of students with disabilities in a mainstream environment is always controversial. Experts like Jerome Shultz (1997) give an objective viewpoint in which he outlines that inclusion is good both socially and emotionally for most students with disabilities. It is also good for most mainstream students who work with them. But there isa time when placing a student with disabilities in a mainstream environment is not a good idea for the social development of the students and can add to potential disruption to the classroom. Other recent studies state that students with mild disabilities who are taught in a mainstream environment make better gains than those taught separately or in pullout classes. (Moore & Gilbreath, 2002)

There are lots of different inclusion models available for schools to use. Each has varying degrees of success both in implementation and student performance. Some schools like to use a collaborative co-teaching model. Other schools like to offer collaborative classes as well as pull out classes for selected students. Some schools provide a very structured special education program, with self contained classes for most students and some mainstreaming of students with mild disabilities with minimal support. Other schools will mainstream students with disabilities, providing support for them in the form of teacher assistants. This study will look at the effects of teaching inclusion groups using a collaborative teaching model. It will compare the performance of these groups as a whole to that of non-inclusion groups taught the same content by one of the collaborative teachers. It intends to see if this model does improve the performance of all students when compared to a non inclusion group.

Background to the Problem

The main controversy of inclusion stems from when the Individual with Disabilities Act (IDEA) was amended in 1997. It cleverly does not use the word “inclusion” but instead states that school districts need to place students with disabilities in “a least restrictive environment” to “the maximum extent appropriate”. Therefore, according to IDEA, the best, least restrictive environment has to be a regular education class. It is as a result of this act that inclusion has become such acontentious issue for schools and school districts to address.

IDEA and subsequent related court cases established the need for inclusion. But it did not ascertain how this was to be successfully achieved. Schools and school districts have had to address the issues of cost, resources, time, the social needs of the student, the needs of the regular education students, the needs of the teacher and possible training of specialists or assistants when determining a working model for inclusion.

The school in which this study is based uses a collaborative model of inclusion. Most students with mild disabilities are taught in inclusion classes taught by a subject specialist and a special educator. Students with more severe disabilities are taught in self contained classes. Less than one third of classes are collaborative inclusion classes. All of the rest are non inclusion, regular education classes. There is a growing controversy in the school community about the merits of this model of inclusion. The success of this inclusion model is dependent on the performance of these inclusion groups as a whole in comparison to the non inclusion groups.

Statement of the Problem

This study will look at the perceived effect of the collaborative teaching of inclusion groups on student performance in a school. The school in question is in the early days of implementing a collaborative inclusion model as outlined in the previous section. There is very little research available to sufficiently measure whether this model of inclusion is successful or not. There is little evidence available to quantify whether this model of inclusion has a positive or negative effect on the academic achievement of the inclusion students, or the mainstream students. Nor is there any evidence as whether the students’ perceive this model as helpful to their school success. In addition, there is little data to quantify the opinions of the teachers whose job it is to work with this inclusion model. Therefore, this study intends to examine the three areas of student achievement, student perceptions and teacher perceptions of this inclusion model and ultimately help to answer the question “How effective is the collaborative teaching of inclusion classes?”

Need for the Study

There is a need for research into the collaborative teaching of inclusion groups, simply because there is not a lot of conclusive data to be found. There is data available to compare the performance of students in self-contained special education classes to that of special education students who are placed in mainstream classes. An article in WEAC’s website (Stout, 2001) briefly described a number of studies that show that special education students perform better in regular education classes than in special education classes. However, this article goes on to mention that there is no national data available, and little information as to how these students were accommodated in their regular education classrooms.

It is possible to conduct a small study of collaboratively taught inclusion classes in one subject area in one middle school and compare their results with non-collaboratively taught classes in the same subject area in the same grade level taught by one of the collaborative teachers. This will give the researcher some data to determine whether the collaborative teaching of inclusion classes is effective when compared to non-inclusion classes. It is this first valuable step that is the purpose of this research paper.

Research Questions

The following questions compare collaborative inclusion classes to non-inclusion classes.

1. Do collaboratively taught inclusion classes perform better than regular education classes?

2. Do regular education classes perform better than collaboratively taught inclusion classes?

3. Do inclusion students make better progress than non-inclusion students in a collaborative class?

4. Do non-inclusion students make better progress than inclusion students in a collaborative class?

5. Do non-collaborative classes perform better than collaborative classes?

6. Does having two teachers in the class improve the performance of inclusion students?

7. Does having two teachers in the class improve the performance of regular education students?

8. Is there a relationship between the number of teachers in a class and student performance?

The following questions address the perceptions of collaboratively taught inclusion classes.

9. Can having two teachers in the class confuse students with disabilities?

10. Can having two teachers in the class help students with disabilities?

11. Does having two teachers on the class confuse regular education students?

12. Does having two students in a class help regular education students?

13. Do students with disabilities who are taught in a collaborative inclusion class prefer to be taught in a collaborative inclusion class?

14. Do students with disabilities who are taught in a non-collaborative inclusion class prefer to be taught in a non-collaborative inclusion class?

15. Do students with disabilities who are taught in a self-contained special education class prefer to be taught in a self-contained special education class?

16. Do regular education students who are taught in a collaborative inclusion class prefer to be taught in a collaborative inclusion class?

17. Do regular education students who are taught in a non-collaborative inclusion class prefer to be taught in a non-collaborative inclusion class?

18. Do regular education students who are taught separately to students with disabilities prefer to be taught separately to students with disabilities?

19. Do special education teachers who teach collaborative inclusion classes prefer the collaborative teaching of inclusion classes?

20. Do special education teachers who teach non-collaborative inclusion classes prefer the non-collaborative teaching of inclusion classes?

21. Do special education teachers who teach self-contained special education classes prefer teaching in a self-contained special education class?

22. Do regular education teachers who teach collaborative inclusion classes prefer the collaborative teaching of inclusion classes?

23. Do regular education teachers who teach non-collaborative inclusion classes prefer the non-collaborative teaching of inclusion classes?

24. Do regular education teachers who teach non-inclusion classes (regular education only) prefer teaching non-inclusion classes?

25. Is there a relationship between teacher perception of collaborative teaching and student performance?

26. Is there a relationship between teacher perception of inclusion and student performance?

27. Is there a relationship between the perceptions of regular education students to their performance in a collaborative setting?

28. Is there a relationship between the perceptions of special education students to their performance in a collaborative setting?

29. Is there a relationship between the perceptions of all students to their success in a collaborative setting?

30. Is there a relationship between the perceptions of all students to their success in a non collaborative setting?

Null Hypothesis

  1. There is no relationship between the overall academic performance of collaboratively taught inclusion classes and the overall academic performance of regular education classes.
  2. There is no relationship between the overall academic performance of regular education classes and the overall academic performance of collaboratively taught inclusion classes.
  3. There is no relationship between the academic progress made by inclusion students in a collaborative class and the academic performance made by non-inclusion students in the same collaborative class.
  4. There is no relationship between the academic progress made by non-inclusion students and the academic progress made by inclusion students in the same collaborative class.
  5. There is no relationship between the overall academic performance of collaboratively taught classes to that of non-collaborative classes.
  6. There is no relationship between the number of teachers in the classand the academic performance of inclusion students.
  7. There is no relationship between the number of teachers in the class and the academic performance of regular education students.
  8. There is no relationship between the number of students in a class and student performance.
  9. There is no relationship between the number of teachers, and the level of confusion perceived by students with disabilities in the class.
  10. There is no relationship between the number of teachers and the amount of help that students with disabilities feel that they get in the class.
  11. There is no relationship between the number of teachers and the level of confusion felt by regular education students in the class.
  12. There is no relationship between the number of teachers and the amount of help that regular education students felt that they get in the class.
  13. There is no relationship between the opinions of students with disabilities towards collaboratively taught classes, and the type of class they are currently taught in.
  14. There is no relationship between the opinions of students with disabilities towards non-collaboratively taught classes and the type of class they are currently taught in.
  15. There is no relationship between the opinions of students with disabilities towards self-contained classes and the type of class they are currently taught in.
  16. There is no relationship between the opinions of regular education towards self-contained classes andthe type of class they are currently taught in.
  17. There is no relationship between the opinions of regular education students towards non-collaborative inclusion classes and the type the class they are currently taught in.
  18. There is no relationship between the opinions of regular education students towards being taught separately to students with disabilities and the type of class they are currently taught in.
  19. There is no relationship between the opinions of special education teachers towards the collaborative teaching of inclusion classes and the type of classes they currently teach.
  20. There is no relationship between the opinions of special education teachers towards the non-collaborative teaching of inclusion classes and the type of classes they currently teach.
  21. There is no relationship between the opinions of special education teachers towards teaching in a self-contained special education classroom and the type of classes they currently teach.
  22. There is no relationship between the opinions of regular education teachers towards the collaborative teaching of inclusion classes and the type of classes they currently teach.
  23. There is no relationship between the opinions of regular education teachers toward the non-collaborative teaching of inclusion classes and the type of classes they currently teach.
  24. There is no relationship between the opinions of regular education teachers toward the teaching of inclusion classes and the type of classes they currently teach.
  25. There is no relationship between teacher perception of collaborative teaching and student performance.
  26. There is no relationship between teacher perception of inclusion and student performance.
  27. There is no relationship between the perception of regular education students and performance in a collaborative setting.
  28. There is no relationship between the perception of special education students and performance in a collaborative setting.
  29. There is no relationship between the perceptions of all students and their performance in a collaborative setting.
  30. There is no relationship between the perceptions of all students and their performance in a collaborative setting.

Definition of Terms

Collaboration – for this study, collaboration refers to the co-teaching of an inclusion group by 2 teachers, one a regular education subject specialist, the other a special education teacher.

Collaboration classes – a class taught in a collaborative model. For the purpose of this study, by two teachers, one of whom should be a special education teacher.

Collaborative setting – a class taught in a collaborative model. For the purpose of this study, by two teachers, one of whom should be a special education teacher.

IDEA – the Individuals with Disabilities Act (1997). It stated that students with disabilities must be placed in a “least restrictive environment”. This act set a legal precedent that a student with disabilities should be educated in regular education setting where possible.

Inclusion – the education of students with disabilities in regular education classes. This is also sometimes referred to as “mainstreaming”.

Inclusion groups – a class or grouping of students that contains a student with disabilities taught in a regular education (mainstream) setting.

Non-collaboration classes - a class or grouping of students that contains no students with disabilities.

Regular education groups – a class or grouping of students that contains no students with disabilities.

Self-contained classes – a class or grouping of students that contains only students with disabilities and is usually taught by a special educator.

Limitations

There are a number of limitations with this study. Some limitations are forced upon the researcher due to the nature of the study. The sample size of students is limited to those studying social studies. The sample of teachers to be surveyed is limited to one school. This is because the study aims to evaluate the success of this particular collaborative teaching model in a certain middle school to a limited cohort of students. The data that will be collected will be limited to the quarterly test scores of Social Studies groups taught by a sixth grade teacher. This teacher teaches both inclusion groups collaboratively and regular education groups non-collaboratively. The study will look at the data collected from six different 6th grade classes, two of which are collaboratively taught, inclusion groups. The other four are non-collaboratively taught regular education groups. This is a manageable data sample for a study of this size and should provide enough data to help answer the questions as they pertain to the teaching of inclusion to a 6th grade cohort at this particular middle school.

When measuring perceptions about inclusion and collaborative teaching; this study will attempt to access the opinions of the teachers in the school and the students in the cohort provided. This will also allow the researcher to correlate student achievement to their opinions and perceptions about inclusion and collaboration.

Delimitations

There are a number of delimitations in this study. This study is aiming to show whether collaborative teaching of inclusion classes is as effective for all students as teaching to a non-collaborative regular education class would be. It is also looking at the perceptions of students and teachers towards collaborative teaching and non-collaborative teaching. The study could use date from the quarterly tests of the Social Studies groups taught by the other teachers in this particular sixth grade. These are non inclusion groups and could provide some interesting contrasts in terms of student achievement and student perceptions. The study could also examine report card grades for these groups also. This data, though, is not reliable in as much as different teachers award different grades and teach content in different ways.

The study could also be expanded to examine data from other inclusion groups within the same grade level in other subject areas. This could again be a useful tool in evaluating the type of collaborative teaching that is offered by different teachers in different subject areas. This would not help this study, though.

It is also possible to examine the impact of collaborative teaching within the whole school, thus determining the effectiveness of the model school-wide. Although this is an aim of the study, there are limits of time and teacher cooperation in such an undertaking.

In addition, the study could also take into account the perceptions of the parents of students taught in a collaborative or non-collaborative setting. Also, in terms of the cohort of students being studied, parental involvement and participation could be measured and used as a “snapshot” of parental perceptions. In this case, the researcher has chosen not to survey parents as there are issues of confidentiality, data management of such a large sample, and ultimately the reliability of parents at this school in returning such information.