Experience on collaborative practice between special educators and occupational therapists at special school: a qualitative study

Abstract

Background: Collaboration describes the unity in professionalism among the members of health care services. Collaboration is an important part of special education because it allows for different professionals to share their expertise and knowledge about working with students with disabilities. Studies have been conducted in the past on a variety of topics, including how special educators and occupational therapists view one another, their distinct roles on children, work habits, burnout, and the attitudes and expertise of multi-disciplinary team members. The main gap was founded by the researcher to focus on the collaborative experience of these professionals while working together at special schools. It also provides opportunities for Special Educators and Occupational Therapists to generate ideas of each other and come up with creative solutions to different problems. Aim: The aim of this study is to explore the experience in collaborative practice between Special Educators and Occupational Therapist at special school. Method and Materials: This study has been conducted in qualitative research design with purposive sampling. A total of 10 participants have been selected, 5 people each from 2 professions. A self-developed interview guide has been developed to conduct the interview which includes 17 separate in-depth questions for each professional. This questions were the best suitable to gain the answers that meets researchers aim. Thematic analysis has been approached to analyze the data of this study. Result: According to thematic analysis, six main theme along with sub-themes has been generated throughout the interviews of the participants. The main themes are- 1) Occupational Therapists and Special Educators role at special school, 2) The Harmony, 3) IEP Formulation, 4) Best Experience, 5) Worst Experience, and 6) Expectations. These themes are the best options to describe the words of professionals, their overall experiences of how they collaborate, cope with barriers and balances their ups and down in such a great way. Conclusions: This study has been able to explore the experiences of both occupational therapists and special educators within their same working area and also able to know about their coping criteria of difficult and challenging situation. Keywords: Collaborative Practice, Special Educator, Occupational Therapist, Special School.