Making Possibilities Visible

This dissertation seeks to investigate the development of collaboration among different institutions and disciplines to serve young children with and without special needs. The Education Center for Young Children and Families (ECYCF), located in an urban area of a Midwestern city, was chosen as the research site for this dissertation because it offers comprehensive services and utilizes a progressive inclusion model (based on a 14-year history of partnership among multiple institutions). Utilizing ethnographic methods such as participant observation, semi-structured interviews, document analysis, and focus group interviews, data was collected over three years. The data corpus was divided into two parts: (1) historical and leadership level and (2) practical and classroom level. The second level focused on one classroom led by two Head Start and two special education teachers. Collaboration patterns at the leadership and the practice levels represented integrated collaboration and family collaboration respectively. At the leadership level, their shared vision to provide seamless and comprehensive services for children and their families in the community sustained the long-term partnership despite the differences among organizations. When they opened the ECYCF building in 2001, the leaders also constructed the integrated curriculum to blend the different philosophies and practices of different agencies. However, at the practice level not all the teachers from different agencies were ready to fit into the new system and norms. The interaction patterns among teachers from different agencies can be described as the way that a family that lives together in challenging situations might act; the teachers had to learn to adjust their ways of teaching to the context of the ECYCF. Two spheres of cultural elements influenced practical level collaboration: “organizational coordination” and “personal beliefs and values.” Both of them are needed for efficient collaborative teaching team. Therefore, the administrative level partnership needs to continuously provide organizational conditions, such as socializing opportunities for teachers and active sharing of the ‘vision’ and the passion that have driven the leaders of the partnership. Further research is needed to examine the effectiveness of collaborative teaching, specifically, teacher collaboration and children’s socializations.