laborative teaming is defined as a group of individuals working together to achieve mutually defined goals (Janney & Snell, 2000). An important
aspect in teaching children with deafblindness is
for professionals and families to work collaboratively as a team to provide appropriate services.
Educational team members work together to integrate an often complex array of supports for
learning, mobility, and classroom participation
(Odom et al., 1999). The collaborative teaming
process gives opportunities for general educators, special educators, and parents to share
knowledge and skills to generate new and novel
methods for individualizing learning (Villa & Thousand, 2000). A transdisciplinary approach is
shown to be effective when working with children
who are deafblind because they have complex
learning needs that require a skilled team
of educational service providers. Their complex
needs present challenges to the children's educational teams and their families (Chen, 2004). In a
transdiciplinary model, professionals share roles
and may combine their assessments and treatment tasks so that any one individual may be carrying out the responsibilities of a different professional (Howard et al., 2013).
The transdiciplinary model helps the team
overcome challenges when working with a child
who is deafblind because all members of the
team collaborate and share their areas of expertise to meet the child's specific needs. Specialists
should work collaboratively with the entire educational team to help identify problem areas related
to their given area of expertise as they arise
throughout the day (Downing & Eichinger,
2011). For teaming to be effective, professionals
have to collaborate on a regular basis and share
valuable information with the team. Collaboration
can take place face to face or at a distance, as
long as all members of the team know and understand what the needs of the child are.
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