Interprofessional Education: Collaborative Pedagogies for Educational Settings

Overview & Synopsis

Effective collaboration among general education, special education, and support professionals is critical for the support of student learning and growth. However, preservice teachers rarely get the opportunity to learn about this process or to engage in meaningful interactions with professionals from other disciplines during their preparation programs. In this article, the authors discuss adapting the interprofessional education model from the health sciences to the teacher preparation context. The interprofessional education model brings students from multiple disciplines together in multidisciplinary teams to explore, analyze, and evaluate learner academic, behavioral, and support services assessments and to make recommendations for future learner support. The authors discuss their experiences implementing a short-term online interprofessional education experience for undergraduate and graduate students across five disciplines. The authors also discuss the implications of and make recommendations for establishing and sustaining interprofessional education in teacher preparation programs.