The importance of interprofessional collaboration for teacher's perception of their competence for adaptive education

Abstract

Interprofessional collaboration is important to help teachers adapt their education to meet the various needs of pupils. Although emphasised, it is unsure how important the association between interprofessional collaboration and adapted education really is. In this article we study teacher's perception of the quality of interprofessional collaboration and of their competence in providing adapted education. Furthermore, we study whether and to what extent interprofessional collaboration is associated with teacher's perception of their competence for adapted education. The data come from a 2017 survey to 225 contact teachers in 5th-7th grade in 37 schools, in four municipalities in Norway. The response rate was 69.8 percent. The results from the linear regression analysis show that interprofessional collaboration only had weak associations with teachers' perceptions of their competence to adapt their education. Of the various dimensions of interprofessional collaboration; interprofessional climate and culture; professional power, organisational goal, and leadership and motivation, it was only organisational goal that contributed significantly to explain adaptive education. However, collective teacher efficacy, measuring collegial support and learning within the school explained a substantial part of teachers' perception of their competence to adapt their education. A plausible interpretation of these findings is that the school collective and collaboration with other teachers are more important to promote adaptive education than interprofessional collaboration because the teachers more than anything are engaged in their core activity-teaching.