March 30, 2013
All Together Now: Special and Regular Educators Prosper in PLCs
While many principals encourage special education teachers to participate in grade level or departmental team meetings, the notion that both special education and regular education teachers should be members of the same grade level or departmental teams received strong support from a pair of recent publications by Shipley (2006) and Blanton and Perez (2011). The findings of these researchers align with what PLC proponents have believed for a long time. Principals must do more than encourage special educators to participate, they must insist that special educators work alongside their regular education colleagues as contributing members of collaborative teams.