If it takes two to tango then teach both to dance: examining the influence of interpersonal and contextual features on a co-teaching partnership

There are certain elements that must be in place for a co-teaching partnership to be successful. All of these elements must be in place to a sufficient degree for the partnership to lead to powerful learning opportunities for both special and general education students. These elements can be organized into two interacting categories: 1) the interpersonal features that each member of the co-teaching partnership bring to and enact in the relationship and 2) the contextual features that are created by the school leadership that support or impede the partners’ ability to be successful. With respect to the interpersonal features, both teachers have an asset-oriented ideology and believe that students with disabilities can learn in an inclusive setting, both teachers have an asset-oriented ideology about their paraprofessionals, both teachers enact the role of instructional leaders, and both teachers instruct coactively utilizing station teaching, parallel teaching, or team teaching models. With respect to the leadership that must exist for the partnership to be successful, the administrator should have an inclusive paradigm, a knowledge base around special education and inclusion, values compatibility when selecting co-teaching partnership, and provides common time for planning and relationship building. This study examined 1) the ways in which interpersonal features and leadership enacted by the principal shaped the way co-teaching was enacted by one general education and one special education teacher in a first grade classroom. Data collection from this study included eight interviews with both teachers; three interviews with the principal; one interview with two paraprofessionals; one interview with the paraprofessional coordinator; eight semi-structured classroom observations; four semi-structured observations of their grade level common planning time; and a review of lesson plans, information from school’s website, recourses from the main office, teacher’s daily schedule, worksheets, professional development handouts, and a classroom map. Analysis of the data revealed that interpersonal features expressed by each of the teachers lead to a partnership that could be characterized as efficient but not one that could be characterized as “successful” given that their interactions lead to actions that impeded student learning in their classroom. Both teachers had a mostly deficit ideology about their students with disabilities and some of the paraprofessionals that supported them. Their deficit ideology allowed them to be efficient but decreased the rigor of the lessons they created. Both teachers were well-intentioned in creating learning opportunities that had adequate supports for their students with disabilities. The data also revealed that their partnership was negatively shaped by the choices made by the principal. The principal’s approach to supporting co-teaching partnerships in her school caused these two teachers to have an efficient co-teaching partnership rather than a successful co-teaching partnership.