How Co-Teaching May Contribute to Inclusion in Mathematics Education: A Systematic Literature Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript is well organized and this organization helps to support the reader through a complex maze of definitions, and conceptualizations of co teaching, inclusion, and mathematics. An interesting addition to the piece would be to include the concept of Universal Design for Learning in relation to inclusion. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Review coteaching article May 2023

 

This article has some strong content, such as all of their work identifying and discussing coteaching articles. I have been wishing for such an article to be written for a while, and am grateful for their work. However, I have suggestions on how to make it stronger.

 

Naming disability

I notice that the authors decided to name students with disabilities as “students in need of special education.” I have never heard this exact phrase before, and it strikes me as a euphemism. Many disabled adults prefer identity first language, and prefer language to be specific about disability. I don’t think this change has to be done, but I would like the authors to reflect on how they don’t really discuss disability at all in this article. Later disability is mentioned, written as dis[ability] but no discussion of this term. When we avoid discussion of disability, we send the message inadvertently that disability is a problem, and shameful. So perhaps just think about that.

 

Confusion about inclusion

l. 42 “studies focusing on prolific teaching approaches and strategies for inclusive mathematics education”- I don’t know what “prolific” means in this sentence, so please define. I also see from the cites here that you are using “inclusive” to mean equity in general- does the cited Civil article talk explicitly about inclusion? As Waitloller and Artiles note in the article you cite, you need to clearly define what you mean. While you do have a paragraph on that, it is not specific about race, culture, linguistic differences or disability. As I am sure you are aware, in a US content, inclusive mostly means including disabled students. Internationally, it is more likely to mean including any marginalized group. Throughout your review, you move between math ed research that does not even use the term inclusive (but uses equity) and is focused on race, cultural and linguistic differences. And then the next sentence might be about a study that is focused on disability. It needs to be much more explicit what group studies you cite are concerned with. I know you are careful to only be reviewing studies about “inclusive” math, but the introduction and the lit review are overly general. Another example is l. 148 where the word “diversity” is not defined.

 

Lit review organization

The paragraph on the work of Roos does not seem to taken up later in the paper. I would check over the lit review and only describe in details categories that become important later in your analysis. On the same note, the categories in Waitoller and Artiles that are mentioned in the methods section, to my mind, belong in the lit review and should be unpacked since they are important to your analysis.

 

Analysis

I was unclear about how you defined articles as either being focused on varying abilities or for all students. It seemed as if this second category might have been simplified from what was proposed in the Waitoller & Artiles article. I did not feel that I really understand how you decided that an article was either about overcoming barriers to participation, or not? Was it more about whether students in the special education system were named? Did the article just need to mention this focus on all students once? How were discussions made about the difference between these two categories? This was perhaps the most important change I would recommend, as this seemed very important to the analysis, yet was not explained in enough detail for me to know how the articles were coded. In l. 471 you write that those in the second category are ones in which “students are not labelled, thus embracing all students.” So was this how they were coded? If specific disabilities were not mentioned, then articles were in the second category? And is it your analysis that by not naming students’ disabilities, all students were embraced? I am confused at this point by both your analytic categories AND what you are saying about disability.

 

In l. 266, you mention that none of the articles focused on race, etc. If this is true, then perhaps you might focus your paper on the discussion of inclusion for students with disabilities?

 

 

 

l. 403. The theme of “varied” is not clear from the first sentence, you could consider giving a more descriptive name to this group.

l. 422 not sure what you mean by teachers’ “abilities”

l. 146 Here you cite Kaufmann who is a prolific and loud opponent of inclusive education. You might want to see the other writings of this author.

Ls. 228-234 this text appears to be formatted incorrectly

Identification section in Methods. I would use another word than “hits” which reads too colloquially

l. 364-365. I am confused as how a student can believe in themselves more than their self-perceptions. Isn’t how much they believe in themselves their own self-perception?

none

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf