Merging Expertise: Preparing Collaborative Educators.

What would it be like if teacher candidates were prepared to negotiate difference as it exists in today's classrooms by learning to operate within collaborative communities of inclusive practice? What would it be like if teacher education modeled a truly inclusive form of educational practice where students "are not seen as disabled, defective, or disordered" but instead viewed as "different, complex, and whole" and "reflecting a diversity of cultural, social, racial, physical, and intellectual identities" (Christensen, 1996, p. 63)? What if teacher education programs helped future general and special education teachers to feel comfortable and capable with such complexity through a preparation model that promoted the merging of their areas of expertise (Altieri et al., 2012)? These were the philosophical questions that were driving us in 2006 as we began to think about transforming our teacher education model.We knew that co-teaching had proven to be an effective model for promoting the achievement of students with disabilities. Thousand, Villa, and Nevin (2006) and Scruggs, Mastropieri, and McDuffie (2007) cogently presented their meta-analyses and the documented benefits of collaborative partnerships and co-teaching for students, teachers, and schools. We also knew that, after more than 30 years of calls for collaborative teacher preparation in special and general education (e.g., Blanton &. Pugach, 2007; Winn &. Blanton, 2005), only a small number of programs had made significant, long-lasting changes to that end. We just had become a unified school of teacher education at Radford University in 2006, but there were still strong ties to program areas, and we were looking for ways to enhance collaboration but keep the distinct practitioner roles of general and special education. Blanton and Pugach's (2007) conceptual models for collaborative programs helped us think about how we could integrate our programs and merge expertise, rather than merge programs.We also were strongly influenced by the realities of the field of special education and those who chose it as a career. In 2008, when we proposed our 325T grant (Project MERGE: Merging Expertise for Results in the General Education Curriculum), a chronic shortage of special education teachers was a major problem in Virginia and the nation. In Virginia, 70% of school divisions anticipated "severe shortages" or "shortages" of teachers of students with "high incidence disabilities" (Virginia Department of Education, 2006).Program DescriptionThe purpose of our project was to improve the quality of services and results for children with disabilities, primarily through collaboration. Merging the expertise of our special education, general education, and content-area faculty served what was and continues to be our overarching vision: the preparation of special and general educators who create and sustain successful, equal partnerships to teach all students in the general curriculum.Through the 325T grant, we designed and implemented an integrated teacher education pilot program based around the Blanton and Pugach (2007) model of integrated teacher education and an expanded collaborative field experience based around the work of Kozleski, Pugach, and Yinger (2002). Our goals were (a) to revise curriculum and requirements so that graduates would meet highly-qualified teacher standards and would be prepared to meet the needs of students from all backgrounds; (b) to recruit, retain, and graduate 20 students per cohort, resulting in approximately 80 new teachers who successfully completed the improved program in Years 2 through 5 of the grant; and (c) to develop and implement collaborative induction and mentoring activities that would lend support to new teachers and create mutually beneficial opportunities for professional growth for current and former students, faculty, and cooperating professionals.The current iteration of the program works this way. …