Professional Documents
Culture Documents
and Collaboration
New Models
of Cooperative
Teaching
James M. Walsh
Barbara Jones
In a standards-reform era demanding (Nolet & McLaughlin, al and special education integration”
increased access to general education 2000), and at the same time experienc- (Bauwens, Hourcade, & Friend, 1989,
classrooms by students with disabilities, ing an increasing shortage of certified p.17) that provides the direct and imme-
how can less restrictive instructional special education teachers (Kozleski,
diate support to students with disabili-
Mainzer, & Deschler, 2000), we need to
alternatives like co-teaching be expand- ties accessing the general education
develop alternative and additional
ed in light of special education teacher classroom, many authors have written
means to support students with disabil-
shortages and tighter budgets? about best practices in co-teaching
ities to successfully access general edu-
This article describes the challenges (Cook & Friend, 1995; Vaughn,
cation classrooms.
and benefits of new models of co-teach-
After reviewing the benefits of coop-
ing that work in schools today.
erative teaching in the public schools of
Although concern has been ex- Anne Arundel County, Maryland, on the
We propose four
pressed in the special education litera- basis of parent, teacher, and student alternative models for co-
ture regarding the need for more surveys; academic outcome data; and
research on the instructional benefits of classroom observations, we propose
taught classrooms that rely
cooperative teaching (Zigmond, 2001), four alternative models for co-taught on flexible teacher
new laws and regulations call for full classrooms that rely on flexible teacher
access to the general education curricu- schedules and the use of paraprofes-
schedules and the use of
lum for students with disabilities—with sionals. We describe the advantages and paraprofessionals.
highly qualified teachers. In fact, this is challenges of each model based on