Collaboration between the teacher and special education teacher is one of the important factors when working with students with special educational needs, who are included in school program with adapted performing and additional professional support. Various forms and ways of collaboration are used. Many researchers point to a great potential of team teaching, where the teacher and the special educator simultaneously, with the same goal, collaborate in teaching the same group of students. With this approach, students as well as teachers, benefit greatly. The nature and aims of art education offer many possibilities for this kind of collaboration, as pointed out by foreign researchers. In this master thesis, the focus is on the benefits that this kind of collaboration has for students with impairments in individual areas of learning who have specific impairments at the level of visual-motor processes (dyspraxia and nonverbal learning disability). Additionally, we have analysed how special educators and art teachers collaborate and how this collaboration affects their professional development. In this analysis we have included 57 special educators and 85 art teachers in the first, second or third educational level of elementary schools in different Slovenian regions. Descriptive and inferential statistical methods were used for data analysis. We also conducted nine interviews with school professionals who are already implementing this kind of collaboration. Empirical research has shown that most of the school professionals think that this kind of collaboration is necessary, but a large proportion of them have never participated in such collaboration, as they have not yet faced such a case in the classroom. Those who indicated that they have already collaborated, as well as the interviewed school professionals, most commonly rely on informally consulting in school corridors and on teamwork in the expert groups for individualized programs. The most common approach in this collaborative teaching is when the teacher conducts art lessons, and the special educator helps him, provides assistance to the student with learning disabilities and, if necessary, to other students. The school professionals also recognize many benefits for students (product satisfaction, persistence, motivation at work, better organization and work planning) and for themselves (new knowledge, ideas, support, help and division of labour) in this kind of collaboration. The analysis of the situation in practice, in conjunction with the findings of other researchers, can serve as a basis for the formulation of recommendations for the promotion of professional development in the field of collaboration among the aforementioned profiles of professionals in the field of education.
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