5 Collaborative Teaching Practices for Teacher Learning
This post covers collaborative practices that offer ongoing support for all teachers. It defines coplanning, codeveloping instructional materials, collaborative assessment of student work, coteaching, and joint professional learning.
Author: Laura Baecher
Publication Date: March 2023
Publisher: TESOL International Association
Co-Teaching: Co Planning, Co-Instructing, Co-Assessing
This video provides insight and ideas on how to effectively implement co-planning, co-instructing, and co-assessing with co-teaching partners invested in achieving success.
Author: Katie Mosley
Publication Date: May 2024
Publisher: IEP Technical Assistance Center
Co-Teaching Models
This video defines the seven different models of co-teaching and provides implementation considerations. It answers the questions regarding the use of different models every day, using multiple models in one lesson, and is there a model that works best.
Authors: Katie Mosley and Alana Harveth
Publication Date: May 2024
Publisher: IEP Technical Assistance Center
Co-Teaching: Paraprofessionals
This video reviews the purpose and the role of the paraprofessional. It includes how to effectively utilize support staff in an inclusive classroom and offers support structures that could be implemented.
Author: Alana Harveth
Publication Date: May 2024
Publisher: IEP Technical Assistance Center
Co-Teaching as a Mechanism to Deliver Specially Designed Instruction as Part of Special Education Services Within the Context of the General Education Setting
This practice brief explains co-teaching involves embedding special education service within general education lessons with both teachers actively contributing to the instruction of their shared students.
The six classic co-teaching approaches are described with steps to implement co-teaching in your school.
Author: Tammy Barron
Publication Date: December 2024
Publisher: Western Carolina University
Collaborating for Student Success A Comprehensive, Practical Guidebook for Increasing Shared Decision-Making Through Lasting Partnerships
This National Labor-Management Partnership (NLMP) includes: School Superintendent Association American Federation of Teachers, Council of Chief State School Officers, National Association of Elementary School Principals, National Association Secondary School Principals, National Education Association, and National School Board Association. The NLMP developed this guidebook to help improve educational outcomes in public schools by fostering and sustaining collaboration among education stakeholders. The guidebook presents resources, tools, and strategies to support the
collaborative processes that can help teams and committees develop and foster authentic relationships, as well as managing collaborative projects.
Publication Date: 2022
Publisher: National Labor-Management Partnership
Collaborative Inquiry: Teachers Working Together
This article identifies collaborative inquiry as a structured process for teacher collaboration where teachers work together to analyze data, identify problems, and plan effective solutions to improve student outcomes. It covers the benefits of collaborative inquiry, understanding the collaborative inquiry model, the benefits of collaborative inquiry, and how leaders can support collaborative inquiry.
Authors: Kelly Nelson-Danley and Graduate Programs for Educators Team
Publication Date: Updated July 2025
Publisher: Graduate Programs for Educators
Cooperative Teaching
This article explains co-teaching and describes co-teaching at the elementary, middle school, and high school levels. It describes the keys to successful co-teaching and the barriers to effectiveness.
Author: Lisa Dieker
Publisher: Special Connections, University of Kansas
Core Competencies for Special Education Paraeducators
The core competencies represent the required knowledge and skills all paraeducators need to safely and effectively support students with disabilities in K–12 settings. These core competencies address the corresponding role of paraeducators in the four aspects of collaboration, assessment, social/emotional/behavioral, and instruction. Paraeducators support the instructional team and collaborate with multiple team members such as general education and special education teachers, related service providers, administrators, families, and community agencies.
Publication Date: Updated March 2022
Publisher: Council for Exceptional Children
Empowering Collaboration with Technology: Technology that Supports Collaborations
This video explores how technology can enhance various collaborations, including co-teaching. Specific technology that supports collaboration covered is with and between students, with family, and with colleagues. These technologies enable educators to enhance their teaching and engage students more effectively.
Author: Wendy Murawski
Publication Date: March 2025
Publisher: The Center for Innovation, Design, and Digital Learning
Encircle Families
Collaboration between families and professionals results in the best possible outcomes for children with disabilities. Encircle Families is an Arizona nonprofit organization that provides free training and information to parents to help them understand their rights, roles, and responsibilities in their child’s health care and education. Training for pre-service and in-service professionals in education is available to improve collaboration between families and providers and achieve better results for children.
Publisher: Encircle Families
Enhancing Team Functioning in Schools’ Multi-Tiered System of Supports
This practice guide can be used by multidisciplinary teams within a multi-tiered system of support as a resource for overcoming challenges and setting up teams for success. The review and synthesis of several empirically supported frameworks for effective teaming identified common elements that drive team success, including purpose, team membership and authority, team member roles and responsibilities, coordination, communication, consistency, and coaching. The guide provides a comprehensive model to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of team functioning in schools.
Authors: Joni Splett, Kelly Perales, Katie Pohlman, Kira Alqueza, Darien Collins, Natalia Gomez,
Ryan Houston-Dial, Brian Meyer, and Mark Weist
Publication Date: June 2024
Publisher: Center on PBIS, University of Oregon
Evidence from Next Education Workforce Team-Based Staffing Models: Associations with Key Outcomes of Interest
This document reviews the current evidence on team-based staffing models in Mesa Public Schools, the largest public school system in Arizona and the school system partner with the largest adoption of Next Education Workforce team-based staffing models.
Publication Date: Updated May 2025
Publisher: Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University
Five Teacher Engagement Strategies to Foster a Collaborative Culture
Increased teacher engagement promotes positive outcomes for all. This post includes strategies to promote collective teacher efficacy and a collaborative culture through embracing transparent communication practices, strengthening educator engagement with two-way communication strategies, promoting teacher engagement through community inclusivity, supporting teacher professional growth and collaboration, and fostering collective efficacy by repairing teacher confidence.
Publication Date: November 2023
Publisher: Hanover Research
Harnessing Parent Teacher Collaboration
This article defines parent-teacher collaboration, the benefits, and the struggles. It provides collaboration tools to foster effective family-teacher collaboration through emails, video conferencing, and apps used as reminders and a way of sharing information.
Publication Date: July 2021
Publisher: Western Governors University
High-Leverage Practices in Special Education Collaboration: Research Syntheses
This high leverage practice describes a clear set of principles that define effective partnerships have emerged from research which emphasize creating trusting partnerships through communication, professional competence, respect, commitment, and advocacy.
Publication Date: October 2020
Publisher: CEEDAR Center
How School Teams Use Data to Make Effective Decisions: Team-Initiated Problem Solving (TIPS)
This practice guide describes a scientifically-based approach for data-based decision-making called Team-Initiated Problem Solving (TIPS) that includes guidance for school-based teams on the foundations needed to run more effective meetings, a process for using data to identify school needs and goals for change as well as for planning practical and effective solutions, and a process for using, monitoring, and adapting solutions.
Authors: Erin Chaparro, Rob Horner, Bob Algozzine, Jessica Daily, and Rhonda Nese
Publication Date: Revised April 2022
Publisher: Center on PBIS, University of Oregon
Leading the Way: Fostering Collaboration Between General and Special Education
Students receiving special education services are general education students first. That’s why it is so important for general and special education leaders and educators to collaborate to provide high-quality educational programming for students with disabilities. This session will focus on the importance of the partnership between general and special education and the role of leaders in that collaboration.
Authors: Timara Davis, Tammie Knights, and Steven Prater
Publication Date: August 2024
Publisher: The PROGRESS Center
Sharing Good Practice: Strategies to Encourage Teacher Collaboration
This article provides information for what teachers stand to gain through collaboration, sharing good practice in teaching and learning, Joint Practice Development, professional learning communities for teachers, and building teacher collaboration school-wide.
Author: Andy Newell
Publication Date: Updated October 2025
Publisher: IRIS Connect
Stories from the Classroom: Leveraging Relationships to Promote High Expectations
This video points out the importance of general and special education teachers working together to maintain high expectations for students with disabilities. Ani, who was a general education teacher for ten years prior to becoming a middle school special educator and reading specialist, also shares what she wished she knew as a general educator when she first started out.
Author: Ani Breay
Publication Date: October 2024
Publisher: The PROGRESS Center
Supporting Teachers in Implementing Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports
Having an acknowledgment system is a key feature of a PBIS framework for Tier 1. Many schools tend to focus on student acknowledgment, but building a staff acknowledgment system is also critical. Not only does it model how to give and accept acknowledgment, but it also helps with staff morale and engagement. This brief reviews the importance of staff acknowledgment and how to accomplish it.
Authors: Stephanie St. Joseph, Summer Bottini, Alexandra Pierce, Ellie Harrington, Cynthia
Shuttleton, and Bob Putnam
Publication Date: July 2025
Publisher: Center on PBIS, University of Oregon
Teaming in Middle School
This article describes teaching teams that master the integration of the four domains—responding to student needs, integrating curriculum and skills, sharing successful teaching and learning strategies, and maximizing available time creatively—are key to achieving the ultimate vision of the middle school concept. Steps toward this goal occur when school schedules are created that set the stage for core interdisciplinary, single subject, and/or exploratory teams.
Author: Elliot Merenbloom
Publisher: Association for Middle Level Education
The Teacher Team Leader: Simple Habits to Transform Collaboration
This video covers three key responsibilities of the team leader in a Professional Learning Community, assumptions and mindsets for successful team collaboration, and simple actions that transform team functioning.
Presenter: Chad Dumas
Publication Date: April 2025
Publisher: Ed Leaders Network
The Transformative Power of Teacher Collaboration for Professional Growth
This article explores what teacher collaboration is and why it should be a vital part of your journey as an educator, focusing on how effective collaboration can transform the experience of teaching and learning for you and your students.
Publisher: Acacia University Arizona
Two Heads are Better than One: Developing Effective Co-Teaching
This brief explains the three important elements of co-teaching are quality general education, making the curriculum accessible, and specially designed instruction. The brief stresses that effective teacher development means helping teachers recognize their unique contributions to these processes. It then goes on to highlight how co-teaching is facilitated by technologies that provide opportunities for flexible collaboration and communication.
Authors: Nicholas Hoekstra, Ling Zhang, and James Basham
Publication Date: March 2022
Publisher: The Center for Innovation, Design, and Digital Learning