Special and rehabilitation educators can be employed in various positions where they primarily work with persons with special needs, especially in the fields of healthcare and education. Both fields have certain specific characteristics, similarities, and differences in their modes of operation, particularly with regard to teamwork. Special and rehabilitation educators perform most of their work within various professional teams, collaborating with professionals from different disciplines. Teamwork is a very important element of their work, as confirmed by numerous studies and authors. Although the same professional profile operates in both of the previously mentioned fields - healthcare and education - their personal conceptions, experiences, and perceptions of teamwork may differ considerably. The main purpose of this master’s thesis is to examine the personal conceptions and experiences related to interdisciplinary teamwork among special and rehabilitation educators working in education and healthcare. The thesis presents theoretical foundations of teamwork among special and rehabilitation educators in the fields of healthcare and education. It also substantiates the importance and necessity of teamwork for special and rehabilitation educators in various workplaces and institutions. Furthermore, the thesis describes different job positions and work tasks that special and rehabilitation educators may perform. Within the research, we sought to determine what personal conceptions special and rehabilitation educators have about teamwork with professionals from different disciplines when working with persons with special needs, and what experiences they have with such teamwork. The research focus was directed at special and rehabilitation educators as members of various interdisciplinary teams in education and healthcare. For research purposes, we used a qualitative approach, specifically the semi-structured interview technique. We chose interviews because they allow us, through open-ended questions and the possibility of asking follow-up questions, to obtain more in-depth responses and more specific information about the course of teamwork among special and rehabilitation educators. We interviewed five special and rehabilitation educators working in healthcare and five working in education. The collected interviews were transcribed using a website called Sonix, which includes an artificial intelligence program for converting audio recordings into text. The transcripts were then analyzed using the content analysis method. Responses were categorized according to content categories (open coding) and according to the interviewees’ field of work (special and rehabilitation educators in healthcare and in education).Within the research focus, the teamwork of special and rehabilitation educators was analyzed from the perspectives of the implementation of teamwork stages, experiences of teamwork, recognition of the strengths of individual professional profiles within the team, division of roles and tasks within the team, motivation for teamwork, and the perception of equality among team members. The study showed that there are no significant differences between interviewees working in healthcare and in education in how they conceptualize teamwork, and that their personal conceptions are consistent with professional definitions of teamwork. The most notable difference lies in the fact that teamwork in the healthcare sector is carried out more frequently and more systematically than in the field of education.
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