Team Collaborative Practices Between Teachers and Occupational Therapists

Abstract

Abstract Objective. A descriptive, correlational study using a survey instrument and record review was designed to describe collaboration practices between teachers and occupational therapists in public schools and to explore relationships of these practices to individual education plan (IEP) objectives and teachers’ perceptions of occupational therapy contributions to student skill development. Method. Forty teachers of students who receive occupational therapy comprised the sample. Descriptive statistics and Spearman rank order correlations were used to describe the practices and to determine associations among the variables. Results and Conclusions. The findings indicated that teachers and occupational therapists were using collaborative team practices, such as jointly developing goals and objectives, collaboration within the classrooms, jointly monitoring interventions, and jointly reviewing student progress. However, scheduling team meetings was difficult. The majority of respondents stated that occupational therapy contributed to student skill development, and as collaboration practices increased, the teachers’ perceptions of occupational therapy contribution to student skill development increased. A significant negative correlation was found between the percentage of IEP objectives met variable and three collaborative variables—team meetings, reviewing progress, and develop goals and objectives. This finding indicated that as the frequency of these team processes increased, fewer objectives were met.