Collaboration for Inclusion: Practitioner Perspectives

Collaboration as a cornerstone of effective school inclusion is an idea that has high theoretical currency among many scholars in the areas of special education and educational leadership. The challenge for educational practitioners is to find ways to implement high-quality special education programs collaboratively amid the public call for school efficiency and accountability. Accordingly, the primary purpose of the qualitative research project reported in this article was to examine inherent challenges in the implementation of school inclusion programs in ten public schools in North Louisiana over a three-year period. Data collection methods included participatory observation, semi-structured interviews with nine teachers and three principals in four schools, two focus groups, and a document search. The findings revealed the critical and challenging role of the principal for establishing collaborative cultures for successful school inclusion. Additionally, special education teachers and general education teachers experienced intrapersonal and interpersonal value conflicts in the pursuit of educational equity amidst a climate of school accountability.