Swedish special needs teachers’ views on their work and collaborations in education for students with intellectual disabilities

The aim is to analyze what characterizes the work of special needs teachers and what collaborations they engage in in schools for students with intellectual disability. Special needs teachers with degrees from three different universities in southern Sweden participated in the survey. The results show that a majority of the respondents had long experience before they started the special needs training program and they describe the direct encounters with students in the classroom as an important part of their work. Supervision and subject-development also exist, but not to the same extent as classroom teaching.