Abstract
The purposes of the present study were to analyze the structure of cooperation between elementary school teachers in charge of resource rooms and teachers in charge of regular classes, and to explore the relation between the teachers' cooperation and their methods of exchange of information. Participants in the study were 125 resource room teachers who completed questionnaires that were distributed to 93 schools that had resource rooms in 5 prefectures in the area of Japan referred to as Hokushin'etsu (Toyama, Ishikawa, Fukui, Nagano, and Niigata prefectures). Exploratory factor analysis revealed a 4-factor solution. The factors were daily sharing of information about children with regular class teachers, practical use and report of information about children that was obtained from regular class teachers, sharing teaching goals and assessments of the children, and providing information to regular class teachers at the beginning. Comparisons of scores on each of the scales by those teachers making practical use of notebooks as a method of information exchange and those who did not use notebooks revealed significant differences on several of the factors. In addition, comparison of scores on each of the scales between the teachers using case conferences and those not doing so revealed significant differences on all 4 factors.
