Research Focus            Research on the Collaborative Teacher Network will focus on the potential efficacy of a network of middle school educators to enhance their content area instruction to improve reading and overall achievement of students with disabilities.

What Works Clearinghouse   Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts  The Florida Center for Reading Research   The New Teacher Center   The National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems   Bueno Center   Center for Research on Education, Diversity andExcellence (CREDE)

Research Description The Collaborative Teacher Network is a three-year project that was formed in summer 2007. Currently the Network and professional development curricula and connected resources are under creation. Through the research, we will examine teachers’ collaborative planning and teaching, their joint learning through “classroom literacy artifacts” and multi-media, and teachers’ general learning through collaborative inquiry. A major component of the research will include investigating special and general educators' roles and work as they participate in the Network.. All members of the CTN will be from the Chicago Public Schools, the country’s third largest school district. The district serves a large proportion of students from low social economic areas (86%) with a large minority student population: 49% African American, 38% Hispanic, and 6% other minority groups. During the project, we will collect  a wide range of teacher feedback on the Collaborative Teacher Network components and processes. Both quantitative and qualitative data will be gathered as the network operates. We will examine the instructional practices of both special and general education teachers as they participate in the Network. All the students with a disability in the teachers’ classes who are taking at least one general education content area class will be included in the study.