COLLABORATION BETWEEN SPECIAL AND REGULAR EDUCATIONS
TEACHERS: THE NIGERIA EXPERIENCE
Olubukola Christianah Dada
Kwara state University, Malete, Kwara state, Nigeia.
bukkyyemmi@yahoo.com; +2348034468438
ABSTRACT
Students with special needs have been traditionally exposed to segmented form of education in the special schools. Over the years, education of persons with special needs moved towards mainstreaming and the current trend is inclusive education. These students have slowly moved into the flow of the regular classroom, thus the use of the term mainstreaming. However, students were mainstreamed for selected subject or parts of the day; they were not considered part of the typical class. Now the philosophy is to include all students in the same class, which has brought about teams of general education and special education teachers working collaboratively or cooperatively to combine their professional knowledge, perspectives and skills. The paper investigated the collaboration between the special and regular teachers in the era of inclusion. The descriptive research design of survey type was adopted. A fifteen-item questionnaire was designed by the researcher to elicit responses from one hundred teachers in the special and regular schools in Ilorin Metropolis using random sampling technique. Three hypotheses were generated and tested at 0.05 level of significance using t test. The study revealed that was generated and tested 0.05 level of significant differences between special and regular teachers (tcal = 4.40, p<0.05). Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that there is need for in service training for teachers on effective collaboration between regular and special teachers. Regular and special teachers also need to be sensitized on the need for collaboration and the new knowledge about collaboration and this is the practice worldwide and this can be done through workshops and seminars organized by stakeholders.
KEYWORD: Special teachers, Regular teachers, Mainstreaming, Inclusion & Collaboration.
