Preparing student teachers for inclusive classes: the effects of co-teaching in higher education on students’ knowledge and attitudes about inclusion

Teaching in inclusive classes requires that general teachers have basic competences in individualised support for students. Teacher education currently faces the challenge of preparing general student teachers for teaching in inclusive classes and stimulating their integration of knowledge about inclusion, special education, general school pedagogy, subject didactics, and subject science. Co-teaching of university lecturers from different disciplines can potentially bring multiple perspectives to classroom instruction. In an experimental pretest-posttest-design, this study investigates the effects of two co-teaching formats. Participants were 124 student teachers enrolled in primary education at a university in Germany. Dependent variables were student teachers’ knowledge about teaching in inclusive classes and attitudes towards inclusion of children with emotional and behavioral difficulties. Co-teaching was given by a university lecturer for special education and a university lecturer for general school pedagogy. The two co-teaching formats differed in the spacing of co-teaching units with continiuos co-teaching over the entire course of the semester and intermittent co-teaching at single points in time. Analyses revealed no differences between the conditions in student teachers’ knowledge about teaching in inclusive classes. However, student teachers in the condition with continious co-teaching reported more positive attitudes towards the inclusion of children with emotional and behavioral difficulties.