Special Education Teacher Preparation and Family Collaboration

Special education teacher collaboration with families is essential to supporting students with disabilities, yet such partnerships often fall short in practice, and teachers report they are not adequately prepared to work with families. In order to prepare competent teachers for working with families, a Family Collaboration Project was incorporated into a special education teacher education program course taken concurrently with clinical practice in the field. Teacher candidates were assigned to intervention and comparison groups, with and without implementing the project, and their learning outcomes were compared through a pre-post survey and written reflection. Results show that candidates who participated in the intervention group increased their understanding of teacher--parent collaboration and increased their learning of communication skills in comparison to candidates who did not complete the Family Collaboration Project. In addition, compared to those in the comparison group, candidates in the intervention group provided more positive comments on the project reflection regarding their experience working with families and on the impact of collaboration with families on special education student outcomes.