Despite the documented importance of professional experiences in teacher preparation, numerous questions persist as to how university supervisors can effectively contribute to rural preservice teachers' development and to establish lasting collaborations between involved stakeholders (e.g., collaborating teacher, principal, community). This paper provides insight into the challenges and potential for a comprehensive and updated approach to in-person supervision in a rural sociocultural context. Transcriptions of field notes, observation protocols, and conversations from forty supervision travels to remote Alaska villages are examined and interpreted. Results support a fresh, rural-contextual approach to in-person supervision that has the potential to help preservice teachers not only master effective teaching strategies but also support teacher recruitment, retention, and collaboration.
Homebound services involve the delivery of special education in settings other than school sites. Such settings typically include students' homes or hospitals. Most often associated with early childhood special education and with students who are medically or physically fragile, homebound services can also be for those in need of interim alternative educational settings (IAES). Although homebound services have been available to some students with disabilities for more than 50 years, little research exists on that delivery model. This study investigated the training, practices and perceptions of service providers who work in homebound settings. Data from a self-administered survey of a national sample were analyzed. Key findings included: a widespread lack of training for professionals who delivered homebound services; an absence of school district or agency policies or procedure concerning the delivery of such services; and statistically significantly higher perceptions of self-efficacy by those who did receive training.
You've Got That Magic Touch: Integrating the Sense of Touch into Early Childhood Services N ewborns have often been characterized as helpless. However, more recent research suggests that infants are armed with an arsenal of sensory and perceptual abilities that enable them to organize and attach meaning to the world (Lewkowiez, 2000). Examples of such abilities include visual, auditory, olfactory (i.e., smell), and gustatory (i.e., taste) skills. Although initially primitive, these abilities become more refined over time and with experience.Touch is another example of a sensory skill with which children are born. Generically defined, touch might be said to involve one object or person applying physical contact or force on another. More commonly, touch used with infants, toddlers, and preschoolers is seen in the actions of holding, stroking, rocking, patting, cuddling, kissing, and tickling (Newton, 2002;Tronick, 1995). The use of massage and acupressure are also examples of touch. Especially for young children with disabilities, massage and acupressure are a more structured and systematic form of touch and require specialized training by certified and/or licensed professionals.
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