Collaborative Infusion: An Emerging Approach to Teacher Preparation for Inclusive Education

Abstract Preparing teachers for inclusive classrooms is one of the most important challenges facing teacher education today. Collaborative infusion approaches have been used by some programs as an alternative to or augmentation of single course approaches to the delivery of content related to students with disabilities. This paper presents findings of a national survey of 252 teacher preparation programs, including follow-up interviews with chairpersons of programs that used collaborative infusion approaches. Results indicated that approximately 25% of programs surveyed used collaborative infusion in some form, with the majority of these programs using it to supplement other approaches, such as a separate class. Interviews with those using collaborative infusion indicated that the majority of these persons found this approach beneficial to both students and participating faculty. However, some disadvantages, such as time-intensiveness and lack of congruence with university structures, also were noted.