Elementary and Special Educators Learning to Work Together: Team Building Processes

Abstract

At the University of Florida's College of Education, two elementary teacher educators and two special education teacher educators collaborated to develop a preservice program to prepare teachers for inclusive education. The four teacher educators represented very different educational and research traditions and worked in departments that did not have a history of collaboration. This paper is a retrospective analysis of our team building experience. We describe the context in which team building took place, the challenges that threatened our efforts at collaboration, the shared understandings we developed, and four processes that helped us to find common ground.