Nature and Scope of Collaboration between School Counselors and Special Education Teachers in Working with Students with Disabilities

Abstract

Building collaborative relationships between school counselors and special education teachers is critical to help school counselors effectively serve students with disabilities in closing the achievement gap and assisting them with career and college readiness. As such they often serve on 504 plans and Individualized Education Programs (IEP) teams for students with disabilities and coordinate and monitor Response to Intervention (RTI) programs in schools. Nevertheless, conflict rather than collaboration between these two professionals was documented. The purpose of this study is to investigate and explore the scope of collaborative relationship between school counselors and special education teachers as it relates to the extent of collaboration, roles of each parties, outcomes, challenges, and beliefs and attitudes towards collaboration in working with students with disabilities. The results of the study reveal strides in collaboration between school counselors and special education teachers in serving students with disabilities. However, yet some considerations remain. Providing content focused professional development, prioritizing time for collaboration between school counselors and special education teachers, and clarifying the role of the school counselor and special education teacher could work to further enhance the collaboration between school counselors and special education teachers in working with students with disabilities.