Chapter 2: The Special Education Practitioner: Using Knowledge Base to Foster Collaboration

I am currently a special education practitioner in a full-inclusive environment, where students with and without disabilities are educated alongside one another. To effectively teach all of my students, I am required to collaborate with the general education teacher, my administrators, and students’ parents. Collaboration in education involves the working together of the education community to support the needs of all students in a building. The educational community is operationally defined in this chapter as a group of people working together who have a direct or indirect impact on the education of students. In this chapter, I provide insight into how special education practitioners can use their knowledge base to foster collaborative relationships, specifically, collaboration with general educators, administrators, and students’ parents as well as the educational implications of these relationships.