Despite the growing demand for professionals with doctoral degrees in special education, doctoral programs are not producing enough graduates to fulfill this need. Although large attrition rates exist in doctoral study across discipline, very little is known about the attrition or satisfaction of doctoral students in special education. This article reports the results of a nationwide satisfaction survey of 619 students from 78 doctoral programs. Findings indicate that students appear generally satisfied with their programs. However, areas of concern include program structure, overall workload, and quality of preparation in research. Implications for doctoral programs are presented.
Special education teachers in today's workplace must show “competence at teaching everything” (Mastropieri, 2001). They work in different settings, teaching and adapting content across all levels. Added to this complexity are reform efforts that are driving major changes in the entire special education system, including service delivery models and teacher roles. However, without an understanding of teachers' current roles and responsibilities, we cannot know if such recommendations are feasible or how they would change the world of practice. This study surveyed high school special education teachers to investigate their daily work lives. In general, participants taught courses in several different content areas, primarily in self-contained settings. They also held numerous nonteaching roles. All roles and responsibilities were independent of the number of years taught and of teachers' educational backgrounds. Implications for transforming teachers' work lives in an effort to increase student outcomes are discussed.
Over the last decade, concern has grown regarding the faculty shortage in special education . In part as a reaction to a federally funded study conducted in 1999, the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) increased funding for doctoral study in the form of Special Education Leadership Personnel Grants (Gilmore, 2005; Price-Ellingstad, 2005). This paper reports results of a nationwide survey of 619 students from 78 doctoral programs. It compares demographic and background data of current doctoral students to students surveyed in 1999. Results indicate that although the doctoral population does appear to be changing in the direction recommended by researchers in 1999, both contemporary views about doctoral study and the resulting agenda need to be rethought.
The diversity of teacher roles has been a long-standing concern in the field of special education. Role complexity has been implicated in teacher burnout and attrition and in the inefficiency of service delivery models. Recent evidence suggests that new policy may be further complicating teacher roles and that teachers may not be prepared for such change. This study is a comparison of 184 preservice special education teachers' expectations for their future roles with the current roles of 133 practicing teachers. In general, pre-service teachers' expectations appeared to be quite accurate. Significant mismatches are revealed in several areas, particularly with respect to collaboration and the settings in which teachers work. Implications are presented for policy makers, administrators, and teacher educators.
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