Job satisfaction and job performance go hand in hand. A major determinant of job satisfaction involves performing tasks related to one's training and interests. If learning disability specialists are to achieve in these critical roles, they reasonably must be trained for the roles they perform and be employed to undertake the roles for which they are trained. Though a reasonable expectation, the resource teachers surveyed said this was not the case. Results of this survey should be of interest and use for teacher trainers, practitioners, and school administrators. -G.M.S.To investigate the role expectations of the high school learning disability resource teacher, a behavior scale was developed to which incumbents responded as to their actual and desired role performance. Inspection of data from the 134 resource teachers indicates that there are few areas of consensus among the respondents.T he importance of an understanding of teacher roles, specifically that of the high school learning disability resource teacher, cannot be lessened in contemporary education. The emphasis on accountability in educational institutions has added new dimensions to role actualization. The authors believe that administrators, fellow teachers, and parents fail to appreciate the fact that the high school learning disability resource teacher is (1) a teacher who must be among the best, (2) a curriculum specialist with a comprehensive understanding of a variety of subject areas, (3) an expert in methods of working with students who are difficult to instruct and reach, (4) a technician competent in the use of the "tools of the trade," both hardware and software, (5) an administrator who keeps reports, records, and arranges schedules of others, (6) a counselor who deals first-hand with educational, social, occupational, and personal problems, (7) a public and human relations expert in working and communicating with administrators, colleagues, students, and parents, and (8) a diagnostician whose competence plays a major part in student learning.The behavior of such teachers will be determined by the role expectations as perceived by the incumbent as well as the expectations of parents, general and special education adminis-
Nonreading curricula are being proposed for mildly handicapped students mainstreamed in secondary classrooms. In this study, three probes investigated various conditions for acquiring textbook content through listening and reading utilizing simulated classroom assignments. Statistical analysis showed that reading test scores seemed to have little relationship to performance on the textbook assignments for either reading or listening conditions. The results of the probes indicated that listening to textbook content was generally as effective as or more effective than reading textbook content, but on all probes there was a high degree of variability in performance. The findings seem to suggest that teachers of content courses may need to explore reading and listening performance employing the materials used in class rather than relying on the results of standardized tests to make instructional decisions. Implications for teachers are discussed.
Downloaded from 614 and eighteenth centuries, making only token efforts to adapt to students of widely varied abilities, backgrounds, and interests. The role of the school is now being modified in breadth, depth, and the types of students being served. I n breadth, the schools have become concerned with a great variety of subjects, such as vocational education, sex education, sociology, cosmetology, and driver training. And in depth, they have deeply penetrated into areas such as the sciences of physics, mathematics, microbiology, and cellular biology. Many schools are now serving a greater variety of students, from those with severe handicapping conditions to the gifted.Many efforts have been made to salvage the learning-disabled child. Special classes have been introduced to aid in reading and arithmetic, special materials have been developed, reorganization of teaching models has begun, including team teaching, departmentalized teaching, and open schools; learning resource centers have been initiated; and massive inservice teacher training efforts have been developed. All are innovative and to some degree successful. All have a commonality, however, that compounds the problem: Each relies on reading as the principal means of gathering information. Each works to transform the nonachieving child into a capable reader in order to cope with the existing educational program. Unfortunately, these efforts have had only marginal success, particularly at the secondary level.For the learning-disabled student and other poor readers, acquiring the enriched educational content of the regular program is necessarily restricted. A greater portion of the school day is relegated to basic skill training. Since classroom assignments are largely read, the learning-disabled student is often designated to watered-down programs, running errands, listening to class discussions and lectures whose foundations have been a prior reading assignment, and generally confirming earlier suspicions of inferiority. The junior high and secondary level student, in grade seven through grade twelve, is particularly vulnerable to our present educational offerings. The elementary school is generally selfcontained and better suited to meet the unique needs of the learning-disabled child. Remedial efforts are less obvious, and the curriculum is more easily modified to suit the needy learner. The secondary schools have several unique problems that inhibit successful planning for learning-disabled students.at CARLETON UNIV on June 14, 2015 isc.sagepub.com Downloaded from 615 Secondary schools are generally on the platoon system; subsequently, each teacher may see from 150 to 200 students a day, knowing little of the special needs of the individual student. Also, secondary teachers are hired because of their content specialty. They are not trained to work with handicapped students in their curriculum speciality, in the remedial sense, or in curriculum modification. Perhaps the most obvious difference is the impersonal milieu that is perpetuated by the vast ...
H ISTORICALLY, the educator, psychologist, physician, and others have been concerned with the challenge of educating exceptional children, such as the mentally retarded, the deaf, the blind, the culturally disadvantaged, and more recently, the learning disabled. The philosophies, rationales, methods, and techniques employed have been numerous and have been used with differing degrees of success. A basic problem has been the absence of a clearly articulated philosophy of special education -a philosophy that could serve to unite the assorted groups of professionals and nonprofessionals who have traditionally served the exceptional child. A philosophy with teeth has been needed -one capable of generating dynamic and systematic approaches to diagnosis and treatment. The purpose of this paper is to discuss two basic approaches to remedial education: the global approach and the learning-disabilities approach.The global philosophy of education has deep historical roots. Traditionally, schools were developed for the elite few. Plato talked of the need for education of the elite. Royal offspring and others of the upper class were part of the fortunate few. The rising middle class recognized that social and financial mobility were in large part dependent upon education. The lower classes, through the labor-union movement in the United States, reacted to the barbarism of child labor and demanded educational opportunities. All children were finally given the right to a publicly supported education.The curriculum employed successfully in schools for the elite became the legacy of the public schools. It soon became evident that certain children were unable to benefit from this general program. One portion of the population that was not profiting from the global approach was the excep-* Douglas E. Wiseman, Ed.D., is supervisor of Program Development and Evaluation in Special Education in the St. Paul, Minnesota, Public Schools. He has taught emotionally disturbed learning-disabled children as well as the retarded and has developed experimental programs in the education of deaf children, the learning disabled, and the emotionally disturbed.
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