students with special needs to access the mathematical ideas and concepts
put forth by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Standards-
based curricula.
The development of structures that promote joint planning and reflec-
tion is central to a successful collaborative relationship (Friend and Cook
2006). In their planning meetings, the special education and regular educa-
tion teachers in these essays familiarize themselves with the mathematics
content and pedagogical strategies for upcoming lessons and anticipate dif-
ficulties that students might experience. They also discuss what student
strengths and prior knowledge might help with the next series of activities
and concepts.
Studies of collaboration have found that students learn more when spe-
cial education and classroom teachers are flexible, adjusting their plans to
meet students’ needs, and when they share compatible pedagogical strate-
gies, such as maximizing students’ engagement and providing a consistent
structure. The special education teacher is an active partner, not an assis-
tant, who actively instructs her students, providing additional practice and
opportunities for the students to encounter important mathematical con-
cepts (Mastropieri, Scruggs et al. 2005; Kloo and Zigmond 2008).
Because the special education teacher is more likely to work with stu-
dents either one-on-one or in small groups, her observations often become
the focus of the debriefing meetings. These meetings involve reviewing stu-
dent work and assessments with the classroom teacher, as both try to make
sense of what the students understood and what areas of confusion re-
mained. The teachers note what strategies seemed to work well in addition
to those that did not seem to help the students gain understanding. The
classroom teacher provides the crucial perspective of how the students are
performing in the context of the whole-class mathematics community. In
the essays that follow, the teachers detail aspects of their collaborative rela-
tionships. What does it look like when teachers collaborate? What do they
talk about? How can we get beyond the generalization that collaboration is
good and figure out how it actually can work?
In “Collaborative Planning,” Michael Flynn writes about his collaboration
with a paraprofessional in his second-grade classroom. He meets with the
paraprofessional regularly to go over the mathematical focus of the upcom-
ing lesson and to plan how she might support the students to make sense of
the concepts that he is teaching to the whole class. He also describes how
he and the paraprofessional built trust and were able to have honest and
open exchanges about working with these students to best serve their needs.
WORKINGCOLLABORATIVELY