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What is it?

Collaboration among school staff (e.g., general and special educators, related service providers) that builds a sense of collective responsibility for educating students with disabilities supports the development and implementation of high-quality instructional programming designed to meet the needs of students with disabilities.

When general educators have opportunities to collaborate with special educators, they are more likely to see supporting students with disabilities as a shared responsibility and view special educators as partners and critical sources of information (Sundeen, 2022). Research shows schools with high levels of staff collaboration often have higher student academic outcomes, lower teacher turnover, and teachers using more advanced instructional practices, and there are often stronger social connections among faculty (Schleifer et al., 2017).

What do teachers and leaders need to know? 

In order to support the conditions that facilitate staff collaboration, school leadership must prioritize the time and resources necessary to encourage ongoing collaboration.

Just like student belonging and family engagement, the heart of staff collaboration is mutual respect where all staff feel valued, heard, engaged, and supported. Finding time to meet is frequently cited as a barrier to productive collaboration and is often dependent on administrator support and the allocation of time in the school day (Nese et al., 2023; Da Fonte & Barton-Arwood, 2017). To support staff collaboration leaders can 

  • intentionally develop schedules that protect time for staff collaboration.
  • provide opportunities for general educators, special educators, related service providers, and other school staff to learn together.
  • establish professional learning communities or other teaming structures that allow educators to work collaboratively in a safe environment to tackle core educational issues across roles and experiences.