Chapter 4: Fixing The Implementation Gap: Creating Sustainable Learning Spaces for Successful Coteaching and Collaboration

In this chapter, we will outline how to implement a large-scale adoption of coteaching practices through a systematic and organic change process. Despite tremendous effort, it continues to be a genuine challenge for educators to implement changes—such as coteaching—in meaningful and sustainable ways. The need to consider the local context, along with the unique needs, strengths, and obstacles, provides an uncommon opportunity for those interested in moving beyond occasional coteaching by isolated pairs of teachers toward systematic implementation of coteaching across a larger group of teachers. Developing the beliefs and structures that create an expectation for collaborative work systemwide is the focus of the ecological, multidimensional framework outlined in this chapter. It employs a top-down, bottom-up approach based on work by Bronfenbrenner (1979) and further informed by research in organizational and educational change (Buckingham & Clifton, 2001; Buckingham & Coffman, 1999; Fullan, 2001, 2010) as well as through the authors’ extensive staff development work and program evaluations with large, small, rural, and urban school districts.