Co-Teaching: Guidelines for Creating Effective Practices

What Do We Mean by Co-Teaching? When teachers discuss co-teaching, a similar understanding of the co-teaching concept is important. Our definition is as follows: two or more professionals delivering substantive instruction to a diverse, or blended, group of students in a single physical space. This definition includes four key components which are elaborated here. First, co-teaching involves two educators*, and occasionally, more. For purposes of the discussion here, one of the professionals is a general education teacher and the other is a special educator-either a special education teacher or a specialist in one of the related services such as a speec1i/language therapist. Another configuration of teachers falling under the rubric of co-teaching may be two middle school teachers teaching English and social studies in an integrated block. The intent here, however, is to focus on the somewhat unique possibilities that occur from the different but complementary perspectives of the professionals involved: General educators who specialize in under tanding, structuring, and FOCUSOO Exceₙtional childrenISSN0015-511X FOCUS ON EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN (USPS 203-360) is published monthly except June, July, and August as a service to teachers, special educators, curriculum specialists, administrators, and those concerned with the special education of exceptional children. This publica-