Recognizing that many youth with disabilities lack critical self-determination skills and that such deficits may be a contributing factor to disappointing postschool outcomes, educators and researchers have called for increased attention to promoting student self-determination in the early grades. The authors queried 891 elementary and middle school teachers regarding the extent to which they valued and provided instruction in seven self-determination skill domains. Educators generally perceived self-determination to be an important curricular priority, and the majority reported teaching self-determination skills at least sometimes in their classrooms. Special educators' ratings of overall importance were significantly higher than those of general educators. Middle school teachers reported providing self-determination instruction more frequently than elementary school teachers. These findings lend additional support to calls for promoting self-determination within the general curriculum in the earlier grades.
In this article, the authors examine pre-service special education teacher reaction to and experience in a collaboratively taught higher education course. Forty-three full-time postbaccalaureate students participate in a course designed to examine critical issues in special education, taught by two faculty members, one specializing in mild and moderate disabilities and the other in moderate and severe disabilities. Pre-service teachers respond to a survey about their knowledge and comfort with co-teaching. Data are collected and analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Three qualitative themes regarding participants' perceptions of skills affecting co-teaching emerge: interpersonal skills, collaborative skills, and instructional issues. Overall, participant knowledge of co-teaching increase and faculty modeling of co-teaching is reported as the most valuable contributing factor.
This article provides a conceptual basis for a teacher preparation course designed to improve the writing skills and teaching practices of in-service teachers. To propose this course, we first examined the research on preparing all secondary in-service teachers to use writing well. Research suggests that teachers' histories as writers greatly affect whether they feel confident enough to use writing with their students. Even though many teachers believe in the value of using writing for instructional purposes, they report significant challengesnamely, a lack of professional preparation and time. Given our experiences as graduate faculty members in a large university, we discuss the need for the graduate-level course that we developed. The curricular design is described, and student survey results suggest that the course is effective. Implications for in-service teacher preparation and professional development are presented in light of recent calls for writing reform.As a response to the need for improving the state of writing in secondary schools and for improving teacher training in the area of writing, we provide the background and framework for a research-based course designed to prepare in-service teachers to meet the challenges of writing across all secondary content areas. Years of experience have taught us that many content-area educators do not feel well prepared to teach writing. Oftentimes, they lack the confidence to use writing with their secondary students. Not surprisingly, the teacher educators and professional development professionals who work with these teachers have many questions regarding how to support these in-service teachers-namely, Why does writing matter?What is the state of writing in schools today? What challenges do teachers report when they attempt to use writing in their classrooms?Is there a research-based model of professional development that could serve as a model for supporting in-service writing teachers?Because these questions are important, genuine, and common among teacher educators and professional development facilitators, they deserve legitimate and well-researched responses. Although we originally asked these 38 CHRIS STREET AND KRISTIN STANG questions because we wished to improve our own practice as teacher educators, we hope that the answers will enlighten teacher educators who strive to improve the writing skills and writing pedagogy of in-service teachers.
Understanding the social behaviors teachers believe is critical for school success and can contribute to the development of effective behavioral supports and assist teachers in better preparing students for successful school transitions across the K-12 grade span. We explored 1303 elementary, middle, and high school teachers’ expectations of student behavior to examine the extent to which school characteristics (e.g., poverty, mobility, enrollment, school level) predicted teacher expectations. Our results corroborated findings of earlier studies indicating that teachers consistently placed greater emphasis on cooperation and self-control skills relative to assertion skills. Contrary to our expectations, we found that the level of school risk did not predict the importance teachers place on cooperation, assertion, and self-control skills. Some prominent differences, however, were found across elementary, middle, and high school levels, highlighting the importance of intentional communication and deliberate planning to help at-risk students transition across grade levels. We discuss limitations and future directions.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.