Sarah Glick

Collaboration Expert: Annotation

September 13, 2017

Judith Winn, associate professor in the Department of Exceptional Education in the

School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Linda Blanton, previous
director of the School of Education at James Madison University and current dean of the
College of Education at Florida International University, came together to explore the call to
collaboration, the challenges teachers may face, and the overall picture of what collaboration
might entail. Though they used only one method to gather information, adequate information
was gleaned from numerous observation studies that they researched.
Winn and Blanton strongly emphasized the need for both general and special education
teachers to work together and agree about the students’ needs. To do this, they must
communicate and make sure that they are both on the same page. They found that
collaboration is expanding and will continue to expand and grow as long as teachers
understand the main issue. Challenges, however, are present. For collaboration to succeed,
teachers must make changes in the curriculum and teaching methods. They need to have the
same beliefs about their students, teaching, and learning. Furthermore, collaboration is not
emphasized in higher education as much as it is in the lower grades. Once students get into
high school, it is more geared toward individual accomplishment. Overall, collaboration is
growing, however challenging it is, and there is an ongoing cycle of learning.
This article only talks about the positive outcomes of successful collaboration. However,
it does describe possible challenges that might be faced in the beginning stages. Finally, this
article was useful in many ways. It described collaboration in more than one setting:
elementary, middle and high school, and college.

Winn, Judith and Linda Blanton. "The Call for Collaboration in Teacher Education." Focus on
Exceptional Children, vol. 38, no. 2, 01 Oct. 2005, pp. 1-10. EBSCOhost,
proxy.houghton.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db
=eric&AN=EJ760799&site=ehost-live&scope=site.