I do as I do and not as you say: how high school co-teachers reconcile professional knowledge and beliefs with competing policy directives and expectations

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Tammy Lankford Barron (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
Advisor
William Bursuck

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to understand how general education teachers and special education teachers make meaning of policy and in what way these meanings influence the work of co-teaching. The type of data necessary to address the research questions could only be gained by individually asking teachers questions related to their practice and interviewing co-teachers’ partners to determine individual and shared views. Asking co-teachers about their thoughts, feelings, aspirations, fears, and opinions supported the effort of trying to understand co-teachers’ perspectives. Thus, a qualitative study was used to describe the experiences of 10 pairs of co-teachers across three counties, and the primary data source for this study was interviews. The conceptual framework for this study combined an interpretivist approach to understanding teachers’ experiences with Bolman and Deal’s meta-framework for understanding organizational behavior. Coding procedures and data analysis providing categories of information formed the basis of the emerging themes of the study. Recurring topics emerged from analysis of the data that were examined through the lens of the four frames of organizational behavior in order to understand the meaning of policy and practice in the structure of schools. Teachers discussed how they formed expectations based on cultural understandings and professional knowledge with limited administrative directives or support regarding co-teaching practice. The implications of these findings for future practice are discussed.

Additional Information

Publication
Dissertation
Language: English
Date: 2015
Keywords
Co-teachers, Co-teaching, High school, Inclusion, Leadership, Secondary
Subjects
Teaching teams $x Attitudes
Special education teachers $x Attitudes
Mainstreaming in education
Inclusive education
High school teachers $x Attitudes

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