Running head: QUANTITATIVE ARTICLE REVIEW 1

Quantitative Article Review: “A Meta –Analysis of Co-Teaching Research

Dona Thanushi N S Hettipathirana

Liberty University

EDUC 518 – Understanding Educational Research and Assessment

Dr. Robert. L. Ritz

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Quantitative Article Review: “A Meta –Analysis of Co-Teaching Research

This paper reviews “A Meta-Analysis of Co-Teaching Research” by W.AW. Murawski,

an assistant professor in special education at California State University, Northridge and H.L.

Swanson, a professor of educational psychology and special education at University of

California, Riverside, published in Remedial and Special Education of September, October,

2001.

Summary

The purpose of the study was to synthesize quantitative data on the effectiveness of co-

teaching or cooperative teaching (also known as collaboration teaching, consultation teaching or

team teaching), using meta-analysis. The two research questions addressed were: 1) “Does the

magnitude of co-teaching outcomes vary as a function of grade, gender, length of study, or

severity or type of disability?; 2) Do studies that produce the largest effect size vary from other

studies as function of the type of dependent measure of focus (e.g., grades, social outcomes,

achievements?” A literature review of previous studies indicated that based on authors’

knowledge quantitative analysis of research on co-teaching was nonexistent (Murawski &

Swanson, 2001).

The samples in the study included, research articles containing quantitative literature

related co-teaching actions or activities between special and general educators. Sample selection

was based on the following criteria: 1) The study included sufficient quantitative data that would

enable the calculation of effect sizes for the intervention; 2) The study included four

characteristics co-teaching: a) general education teachers and special education service providers

were working together; b) the intervention was occurring in the same physical space; c) an
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element of co-planning was included; and d) the intervention involved delivering instruction to a

heterogeneous group of students, with and without disabilities; 3) The co-teaching treatment

condition lasted for more than a two week period, excluding pretesting and post-testing

(Murawski &Swanson, 2001).

Out of 89 articles reviewed, only 6, provided sufficient quantitative information for the

calculation of an effect size satisfying the above selection criteria: 3 journal articles, 3 ERIC

documents (not published in referred journals), published between 1991 and 1998. All studies

were conducted in public schools. The setting of the co-teaching intervention, in all studies, was

the general education classroom. Five studies took place over period of one academic year and

the other lasted three weeks. The articles in the synthesis covered grades K-3, 3-6 and 9-12. No

studies included students from grades 7-8.

The research was designed as a meta-analysis2, a statistical analysis method that provides

“a quantitative summary of findings across an entire body of research”. First, the results of

individual studies were converted to an effect size, the scores were then aggregated across the

sample of studies to calculate the overall mean effect size. This overall mean effect size was used

to determine the effectiveness of the co-teaching intervention. The significance of the effect

estimate based on Cohen (1988) was as follows: 0.80 – large estimate, 0.50 – moderate estimate

and 0.20 – small estimate (Murawski &Swanson, 2001). This was a very appropriate research

design for this study, as the overall estimate of effect size facilitates achieve the purpose of the

study which is to determine the effectiveness of the practice of co-teaching with a possibility of

generalization of the results to larger populations.

Data collection was done through a comprehensive literature research to gather co-

teaching related literature through: Database search of ERIC, PsychLit and EdInfo over a 10 year
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time span, (1989-1999); Footnote search all journal and ERCI documents on co-teaching; and

Hand search for co-teaching related articles published in Exceptional Children, Teacher

Education and Special Education and Remedial and Special Education in the past ten years. All

six studies were coded for the following information: study characteristics, sample

characteristics, outcome measures on the dependent variables and the effect sizes (Murawski

&Swanson, 2001).

Dependent measures varied among the studies and included: grades, achievement scores

and social and attitudinal outcomes. The effect sizes for each study was calculated on each

dependent measure using a number of statistical analysis procedures, based on the research

design of each study. Two studies, in which the means and standard deviations were present, the

effect size was obtained by means of Cohen’s d3. The t-test4 scores were used to calculate the

effect size for the two studies, which did not include a control group but conducted a

pretest/posttest research design only on the treatment group. Another study, used F value5 from

ANOVA for calculation of the effect size. The other study, in which only p values6 (probability

values) were provided, r values (Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient) were used

based on the significance level of the p value to determine the effect size. The effect size of the

meta-analysis was determined through calculating the mean of the total effect sizes for all studies

(Murawski &Swanson, 2001).

Effect sizes for individual studies ranged from 0.08 to 0.95, resulting in an overall mean

effect size of 0.40. These results indicate that co-teaching as a moderately effective intervention

for influencing student outcomes. It also indicated that there is a potential for positive outcomes

in achievement. However, the study concludes that further research is needed to substantiate that

co-teaching as an effective service delivery option for special needs students in general education
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(Murawski & Swanson, 2001). Only 6 out of 89 research studies in the span of ten years

provided sufficient quantitative empirical evidence relating to co-teaching. This indicates that

experimental research in the area of co-teaching between general and special educators is scarce

and emphasizes the need for future research (Murawski &Swanson, 2001).

Analysis

Further research, I believe, should include: determining the effectiveness of co-teaching

children with multiple disabilities; analysis of professional, technological, infrastructural and

other requirements related to co-teaching; and the beliefs and attitudes among general and

special educators, parents, peers and para-educators, on co-teaching and their impacts; analysis

of co-teaching strategies for inclusive educational environments.

A threat to validity of this meta-analysis was the researchers’ lack of consideration to

minimize the effect of outcome selection bias, which is the selective reporting of research

outcomes based on statistical significance, as some researchers would have a tendency to under-

report unexpected or undesirable outcomes (Reporting bias, 2013). The researchers did not take

any measures to investigate the chosen articles from published studies for within-study selective

reporting. Investigation for outcome selection bias would strengthen the reliability and validity

of a study, further increasing chances of generalizability.

Changes that have occurred since 2001, such as, NCLB of 2001 and IDEA of 2004 which

require schools to use research based interventions to assist students with disabilities

emphasizing on “shared responsibility of general special education teachers”, have encouraged

research in the field of co-teaching and inclusive education. A meta-analysis of co-teaching

related research since the year 2000 would provide a better understanding through more recent

evidence based knowledge.

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The practical implications of the findings include: exposure of teachers who practice co-

teaching in their classrooms to research data collections as it would help further understand how

co-teaching can best meet the needs of special education students in general education setting;

collection of data on student outcome would facilitate researchers in providing information to

educators on when, where and with whom co-teaching is best implemented; educational

community can learn about the impact of collaborative work relationships between general and

special educators on the students and the what the next steps should be (Murawski & Swanson,

2001)
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References

Gall, M.D., Gall, J.P. & Borg, W.R. (2010). Applying Educational Research. Boston: Pearson.

Murawski, W. W., Swanson, H. L. (2001). A Meta-Analysis of Co-Teaching Research: Where

Are the Data? Remedial and Special Education, 22(5), 258-267.

Reporting bias. (2013, March 27). In Wikipedia. Retrieved July 21, 2013 from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporting_bias

.
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Footnotes
1
An instructional strategy/service delivery option designed for inclusive education of

special education children in the general education setting, through a merger between general

and special education professionals

2
a method for combining statistical results of different quantitative research studies on

same phenomenon into a single statistic called an effect size (Gall, Gall & Borg, 2010)
3
The difference between two means divided by a standard deviation for the data.
4
A test of statistical significance that is used to determine whether the null hypothesis

that two sample means come from identical populations can be rejected (Gall, Gall & Borg,

2010).
5
A statistic that is computed in analysis of variance and used to decide whether to accept

or reject a null hypothesis (Gall, Gall & Borg, 2010).

6
Probability value: a mathematical expression of the likelihood that a statistical result for

a sample randomly drawn from a defined population was obtained by chance (Gall, Gall & Borg,

2010).
7
Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient: a widely used statistic that indicates

the degree of relationship between the distributions of scores on two measures for a sample

(Gall, Gall & Borg, 2010).