The Effect of Co-teaching on Student Cognitive Engagement

Delivering special education to students with disabilities requires highly prepared and collaborative teachers, inclusive learning environments, and strategies that promote cognitive engagement, but many students lack access to these necessities. In rural schools teacher shortages and traditional teaching methods may contribute to disengagement. Some rural districts have turned to co-teaching to disrupt this pattern of inequity. Effective co-teaching between two highly prepared teachers in a general education setting offers students the opportunity to be included and may improve engagement for all students. To investigate the relationship between co-teaching and student cognitive engagement, this study observed teachers in eight rural secondary schools in West Virginia to evaluate differences in student cognitive engagement in co-taught versus solo-taught classrooms. Four district personnel were trained on both cognitive engagement strategies and co-teaching approaches and collected observational data. The Instructional Practices Inventory was used during short walk-throughs to measure cognitive engagement during 701 solo-taught and 181 co-taught observations. Observations occurred in 5th- through 12th-grade classes in reading, mathematics, science, and social studies throughout one full school year. Statistical tests compared mean engagement scores across the different models of instruction. Results indicated that students in co-taught classrooms were more cognitively engaged than students in solo-taught classrooms. These results suggest the need for increased professional development for teams to move beyond the one teach, one support model of co-teaching, additional research on cognitive engagement and co-teaching, and teacher preparation programs to include more examples of, and training in, quality co-teaching models.