In the Special Education Programme designed for children and adolescents with moderate, severe, and profound intellectual disabilities, as well as children with autism spectrum disorders, teamwork among various professionals is a key factor in ensuring high-quality educational practice. In particular, teamwork between teachers and care assistants is of great importance. Their effective collaboration can lead to numerous benefits for students, professionals, and the institution as a whole. At the same time, various barriers and challenges may arise that hinder such cooperation. School leadership plays a significant role in this process, as its leadership approach can either encourage or impede teamwork. The empirical part of this master's thesis examined the perceived benefits, barriers, and challenges of teamwork between teachers and care assistants, while also exploring the perspectives of school leadership on this form of collaboration. The study involved 67 teachers, 27 care assistants, and 7 members of the institutional leadership team. Data on the perceived benefits and barriers of teamwork were collected through a questionnaire, while the views of school leadership were obtained through semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed that both teachers and care assistants recognize the benefits of teamwork. When asked to freely identify these benefits, participants most frequently highlighted advantages for professionals, such as mutual assistance and support, the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and experience, and coordinated work. However, when evaluating individual statements on a rating scale, they identified benefits for students as the most important, particularly increased student safety, faster provision of support, and greater student engagement. Care assistants perceived the benefits of teamwork more positively than teachers. The most frequently identified barriers were organizational and interpersonal factors, particularly lack of time, instability of team composition, personality incompatibility among team members, and differences in perspectives, values, and approaches. Teachers perceived these barriers more frequently than care assistants. Statistically significant differences based on years of work experience were found only in the perception of fear of failing to achieve common goals and fear of embarrassment in front of other team members, with employees having fewer years of experience reporting these barriers more often. The respondents also proposed measures for overcoming barriers and challenges in teamwork, emphasizing the importance of leadership support through the provision of appropriate working conditions, professional development opportunities, and organizational arrangements. The interview results showed that school leadership recognizes teamwork as a key factor in ensuring high-quality educational practice. The leadership is aware of both its benefits and its challenges and promotes teamwork by fostering open communication, involving care assistants in planning processes, providing professional training, offering supervision, and organizing various meetings. The findings contribute to a better understanding of teamwork between teachers and care assistants and provide a foundation for the further development of a collaborative culture within the Special Education Programme.
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