The authors consider the future of special education personnel preparation by responding to an overarching question: What frameworks might teacher educators use as a basis to promote special education teacher effective performance now and in the future? In answering this question, they summarize current trends in the context of schooling and special education (i.e., Common Core State Standards [CCSS], multi-tiered systems of support [MTSS]) and what these contexts demand of special education teachers. The authors propose a practice-based model for fostering effective special education teacher performance. Grounded in the science of learning, the model includes approaches in teacher education that align with this literature. Implications for implementing the model are provided, which recognize current constraints on schools and colleges of education, to better promote this model for fostering effective performance.

The concept of social validity emerged in the 1970s with seminal articles by Wolf (1978), Kazdin (1977), andVan Houten (1979). They urged scholars in the field of behavioral sciences to ensure interventions were important to clients' lives and could be sustained in community settings. Since the 1970s, the importance of social validity has been accepted widely and is now considered an imperative aspect of intervention research in special education (Horner et al., 2005). This is in part because experts posit a relationship between social validity and intervention fidelity (Heckaman, Conroy, Fox, & Chait, 2000;McDuffie & Scruggs, 2008). When the social validity of an intervention is low, teachers are less likely to implement it as it was intended, if at all. The importance of social validity has also entered conversations about the longstanding research-to-practice gap. When teachers do not consider interventions to be feasible, acceptable, or relevant to their work, they may be less likely to adopt and sustain them over time (Greenwood & Abbott, 2001). The Use of Qualitative Methods in Social Validity ResearchTypically, social validity is examined using questionnaires, rating scales, or direct observations by trained raters (Finn 524002R SEXXX10.

Little research exists to help us understand why some beginning special education teachers of reading engage in more effective classroom practices than others. Factors that may influence these differences include personal attributes, preparation, and school environment. This mixed-methods study examined beginning special education teachers (N = 25) who taught reading to elementary students. Teachers were identified as most accomplished, moderately accomplished, and least accomplished, as defined by an overall classroom practice score. Interviews, observational field notes, and survey data on preparation and work environment revealed that the most accomplished beginners were consistently reflective, resourceful, and relentless and used these attributes to improve instruction, whereas others varied in this regard. Furthermore, while adequately prepared in special education, beginners reported inadequate preparation in reading. The interplay of personal attributes, preparation, and school environment seems to be a powerful determinant of a teacher's level of accomplishment.

This study examined various influences on special education preservice teachers' appropriation of pedagogical tools for teaching reading to students with high-incidence disabilities using an activity theory framework. Interview, observation, and artifact data were collected on 6 preservice teachers, their reading methods course instructors, field supervisors, and practicum cooperating teachers. Using grounded theory methods, 4 concepts emerged as chief influences on participants' appropriation of conceptual and practical reading tools: (a) opportunities to appropriate knowledge in practice, (b) personal qualities, (c) motivation for knowledge assimilation, and (d) access to knowledge. Specific information related to these 4 concepts and their relationships are reported with implications for future research and practice in special education teacher education.

Bill and Karen are special education teachers who have entirely different knowledge and skill profiles. Bill is a special educator with 20 years of experience. He teaches reading to third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students in a high-poverty elementary school resource classroom. His school is currently engaging in a schoolwide Reading First effort to improve the inclusion of students with disabilities. Although Bill is a competent special education teacher, his long-standing reliance on a scripted research-based reading curriculum for students with learning disabilities left him with a limited framework for understanding reading instruction. On a test of knowledge about teaching reading, Bill achieved the second-lowest score of all teachers involved in a professional development (PD) effort to improve reading instruction for students with high-incidence disabilities. Bill is learning strategies in an attempt to remediate decoding deficits that his students are experiencing despite their participation in an evidence-based curriculum. However, he is having difficulty incorporating those strategies because of his insufficient knowledge about teaching reading and the overly prescriptive nature of his curriculum.For Bill to succeed, staff development professionals will need to help him acquire a broader framework for understanding word-study instruction, understand how his curriculum currently addresses word-study instruction, and learn how to incorporate strategies into that curriculum to remediate students' demonstrated weaknesses.Unlike Bill, his colleague, Karen, is a brand-new special education teacher who is responsible for teaching math in a secondary resource classroom and co-teaching with general education teachers to provide social studies and science instruction. Karen entered the field with a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and participated in a 2-week alternative route (AR) program to prepare her for teaching special education. The possibilities of her new job please Karen, but she realizes that she knows little about teaching mathematics to students with disabilities and little about teaching social studies and science. Karen's AR program emphasized general principles of teaching and learning but provided limited information about the specific learning needs of students with disabilities and how to address them in the content areas. The structured, evidence-based curriculum that Karen uses to teach mathematics helps a little; but she worries that her students are failing to learn key concepts and to apply their knowledge to word problems. To make matters worse, Karen only sees her students for a maximum of 45 minutes a day, and she is having difficulty providing intensive instruction when she has so much to cover and so little time. In social studies and science, Karen has little knowledge that enables her to help her general education colleagues teach concepts in ways that are more accessible to students with disabilities, and she also has little knowledge of ways that help students acquire key strateg...

This article provides a framework and description of pedagogies that may be used in teacher preparation across a range of settings from college classrooms to P-12 settings to support teacher candidates as they learn to use high-leverage practices (HLPs). These “pedagogies of enactment” must include a continuum of opportunities to use teaching practices in increasingly authentic settings, ranging from video analysis, case studies, rehearsal, and virtual simulations to use of practices with coaching support in a classroom (e.g., lesson study, structured tutoring, and aligned field experiences). In this article, we use research on the development of professional expertise and from cognitive science to identify pedagogies from the teacher education research base that have promise for promoting candidates’ learning and describe how these pedagogies might be scaffolded over the duration of a teacher education program to promote learning.

In this study, researchers operated from cognitive and situated perspectives to understand how individual qualities and contextual factors influenced elementary special education teachers’ learning in a multifaceted professional development (PD) project, Literacy Learning Cohort, focused on word study and fluency instruction. Grounded theory methodology was used to analyze qualitative interviews, cohort meetings, and classroom observations. Participants included five special educators who taught reading to students with disabilities in Grades 3 to 5. Results highlighted the central role of teachers’ ability to analyze their current instructional practice in developing integrated knowledge of word study and fluency instruction and crafting more integrated instruction. Teachers’ individual qualities, contextual factors, and PD components also worked in concert with teachers’ propensity to analyze instruction and ultimately influenced teacher learning (i.e., degree of integrated knowledge and practice demonstrated). Implications of these findings for designing effective PD efforts are discussed.

Teacher education has been criticized as an ineffective enterprise that discourages talented individuals from choosing careers in education (Hess, 2001; Walsh, 2001). Opponents of teacher education argue that lengthy program requirements are prohibitive in terms of cost and time and ultimately unnecessary given that some research has pointed to the importance of teachers' subject matter knowledge (Hess, 2001; Walsh, 2001). In essence, individuals like Hess and Walsh contend that the gate-keeping mechanism for entry into the teaching profession should be an individual's knowledge of particular subject matter and not the completion of a teacher preparation program. Despite these criticisms, several studies of special education teacher education have demonstrated the benefits of extensive preparation (Boe, Cook,