This district-university partnership program is meeting the personnel needs of a 17-district region in the California desert where over 40% of their special education teachers had been employed without appropriate credentials. The program was designed to respond to the geographic and population (68% Hispanic) demographics of the region. Utilizing an alternative credential option (the Internship Credential), courses, extensive practica support, assistance and supervision, and continuing professional development opportunities were provided for teachers in this rural desert region. Preliminary results indicate that 70 teachers completed their Specialist Credential, and the retention rate of these professionals has been approximately 85%. It has been indicated, too, that coaches who provide extensive mentoring of Intern teachers during their two years of working toward full certification have favorable views of the program.
This study addressed the rationale that teachers of students with emotional or behavioral disorders, specific learning disabilities, and moderate to severe academic difficulties offer for deviating from mathematics lesson scripts and the alternative procedures they use during script deviations. Results from analysis of interviews indicated that teachers deviated from lesson scripts so that lessons would become “their own” and they could employ their own personal style of delivery. However, when these instructors deviated from scripts, they primarily engaged in academic behaviors and delivered instruction using wording similar to the lesson scripts, and they maintained a similar style of lesson presentation. The rationales that teachers offered for engaging in script deviations were grouped into four distinct themes: student level of performance, set-up for success, prevention, and management. Teachers’ supplementary procedures were categorized into (a) academic and (b) disciplinary. This study provided insight into the thought processes that teachers engaged in as they considered script deviations and the methods they used to integrate effective instructional and management practices into their mathematics instruction.
Many college-intending students find themselves dealing with the undermatch and summer melt phenomena. Undermatch refers to the situation where academically-successful high-school graduates choose not to go to any college or to go to a local community college not commensurate with their academic achievements. Summer melt describes how students may “melt” away from registering for college. Practical recommendations are provided so that educators in high schools and colleges can implement strategies to ensure that after high-school graduation immigrant students register for their selected universities.
Multicultural Education as a field of study in education is intimately connected to Teacher Education. Most frameworks in Multicultural Education are primarily centered on the inclusion of cultural and linguistic diversity in the curriculum of schools. The purpose of this article is to explain why cognitive learning theory must be an essential element in frameworks of Multicultural Education and Multicultural Teacher Education. Teachers need to understand the principles of cognitive development in students in order to create classrooms where students become self-regulated learners.
The collection of articles in this special series demonstrates that research on English learners (ELs) is occurring all over the United States, where almost 500 different languages are reportedly spoken in the schools (Kindler, 2002). Although Spanish speakers still total approximately 77% of ELs, Vietnamese, Hmong, Korean, Creole (Haitian), Cantonese, Arabic, Russian, Navajo, Tagalog, Khmer (Cambodian), and unspecified Chinese languages represent another 15% of second-language learners. In various large cities, the remaining 8% of ELs include fairly large groups of students speaking Middle Eastern, Southeast Asian, South Asian, European, and African languages (Kindler, 2002). The diversity of languages spoken in urban schools in the United States has given rise to a focus on improving experiences for ELs (Neufeld & Fitzgerald, 2001).
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