In partnership with local schools, faculty members in the College of Education at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) began planning a field-based dual licensure program in special education and elementary education in 1993. The resulting program redefined the roles of university faculty members, school-level mentor teachers, and school administrators in teacher preparation and school renewal. The implementation of the elementary dual preparation program in 1996 helped forge new school—university partnerships that were vitally important in working through the issues that arose with the first 2-year cohort. In light of the resulting success of the elementary program and the need for qualified special educators at the secondary level, the program was expanded to allow secondary education majors to complete dual licensure in special education. The purposes of this article are to describe the rationale for implementing dual preparation partnership programs, the characteristics of the UHM dual preparation partnership programs in elementary and secondary education, the implementation and assessment of the first elementary dual preparation cohort, and the resulting modifications made to the UHM dual preparation programs.
Service-learning has been implemented successfully as an instructional method in K-12 schools, colleges, and universities. Research indicates that service-learning helps students gain knowledge and skills and increase self-confidence and sense of caring. Service-learning projects in colleges and universities are beneficial to those in many disciplines, including education. This article provides a framework for including service-learning in education courses and introduces an innovative checklist to guide and evaluate service-learning as an instructional strategy. The checklist delineates the four-stage service-learning process: (a) preparation, (b) implementation, (c) assessment/reflection, and (d) demonstration/celebration
A utilization-focused evaluation (Patton, 2008) was conducted to systematically investigate special education teacher candidates’ preparation to teach English language learners (ELLs) with disabilities. The results were used to (1) determine current effectiveness of departmental programs and (2) guide program improvement efforts. The initial literature review on ELLs with disabilities and teacher preparation guided the development of a four element framework to organize and analyse the data and results of the program evaluation. Data were collected using (1) a document review of program materials, (2) a faculty questionnaire, (3) a faculty focus group, and (4) a survey of the teacher candidates’ knowledge and perceptions on their preparedness in this area. Data revealed a scattered and disjointed approach to preparing preservice teachers to teach ELLs with disabilities, leading to a lack of special education teacher candidate’s: (1) mastery of essential content and (2) sense of efficacy in teaching ELLs. This investigation also shed light on the range of faculty perspectives, knowledge, and practices in the preparation of special education teacher candidates to teach ELLs.
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