Strengthening Co-Teaching Partnerships for High Productivity

Abstract

Two teachers sharing space in a single classroom does not guarantee that they will function as an effective team. Recent research findings related to the efficacy of co-teaching indicate the need for more professional development to support teachers in building collaborative competence along with clear co-teaching roles and goals. So, how does a co-teaching team develop the mutual trust, respect, and support needed to create and to sustain an inclusive classroom? This article will describe how a structured, teambuilding protocol that is specifically designed to strengthen co-teaching partnerships helps general and special educators effectively collaborate and co-instruct. The step-bystep guide, called UNITED © , provides the scaffolding to promote co-teaching partnerships that produce positive outcomes for students with disabilities in general education learning settings.

Role of High-Performance Implementation Teams in Promoting Effective Use of Evidence-Based Practices

“…UNITED provides administrators clear, sequenced steps detailing a straightforward path for moving a team from a loosely coupled group to a goal-oriented cohesive team prepared to confront challenges together. UNITED is composed of six clear-cut steps for advancing high performance teaming (Mainzer et al, 2016). Each letter in the UNITED protocol prompts team members to take a critical step toward becoming a smoothly functioning team.…”

“…As mentioned previously, each stage contains embedded action-oriented, team-driven procedures. The first stage, team, uses the UNITED protocol to establish a highperformance implementation team (Mainzer, et al, 2016).…”