Date of Award

Summer 2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Committee Chair

Jessica Van Cleave

Abstract

Special educators, particularly the teachers of students with intellectual disabilities, remained an understudied group in research. The purpose of this phenomenological qualitative study was to examine how special educators navigated their lived experiences collaborating with three key stakeholder groups: parents, general education teachers, and administrators, particularly working with students with intellectual disabilities. Specifically, this study examined how special educators experienced collaboration with those stakeholder groups through the framework of McClelland's (1961) Theory of Needs. The study involved two semi-structured interviews with each of the 12 participants, all of whom were special educators at the middle or high school level. These educators had substantial caseloads of students with intellectual disabilities and were employed in a rural district in South Carolina. This study revealed that special education teachers serving students with intellectual disabilities have experiences with stakeholders that are rooted in collaboration created by sustained relational accountability within the structurally bounded system of special education in public schools. Collaboration is sacred when trust is present, negotiated when identity is uncertain, and strained when policy misaligns with student reality. Understanding and supporting special education teachers’ experiences is essential to strengthening inclusive education and stabilizing the special education workforce. Ultimately, sustaining inclusive education and the educators who facilitate it require more than mandates and procedural safeguards. It requires recognizing the relational labor embedded in collaboration and designing educational systems that affirm, support, and stabilize those who carry that labor daily.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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