Teachers rarely work along, as they regularly meet with grade-level or departmental colleagues, PLCs, or even just share ideas around the lunch table. And often, teachers engage in specific work around the design and delivery of instruction. Collaborative Instruction is the Center on Education and Lifelong Learning's overarching term for the broad array of professional arrangements teachers may encounter. The most common form of collaborative instruction "Co-Teaching", which Friend & Cook (2003) define as "two or more professionals jointly delivering substantive instruction to a diverse, blended group of students in a single, physical space." Other setting may feature consultation, coaching, limited partnering, or even the use of para-educators. All of these partnerships between professionals facilitate greater levels of inclusion, which can lead to increase performance for all students (Cole, S., et. al., 2019).
Effective collaboration, doesn't simply happen because two teachers are scheduled together. It requires a great deal of planning, compromise, trust, and - most critically - quality training. The Center on Education and Lifelong Learning (CELL) has incorporated a range of the most up-to-date research and practices into its four-part framework for co-teaching, which features:
- Establishing and maintaining collaborative partnerships
- Instructional planning
- Instruction delivery
- Sustainability & Scale-up