Collaborative Infusion: An Emerging Approach to Teacher Preparation for Inclusive Education

Inclusion – the heart of the matter: trainee teachers' perceptions of a parent's journey

“…It is essential that teacher training institutions do more than provide a tokenistic approach to preparing their students for i n cl u s ive cl a s s rooms. Whether training institutions continue to provide a separate course approach or use the increasingly popular collaborative infusion model (Voltz, 2003), providing increased opportunities for tra i n e e teachers to engage with people with disabilities and their families is a more meaningful way of helping overcome uncertainties about appropriate pedagogy and curriculum while augmenting their understandings of the support role that parents can play in establishing more inclusive school communities. It is clear from this one encounter that Christy's story made a profound impact on these teacher trainers.…”

CHAPTER 2: Preparing Urban Educators for the Twenty-First Century

“…Often it is housed in separate courses (e.g., Multicultural Education, Teaching Diverse Populations, erc.). Among the stated advantages of such an organization is the idea that there is greater assurance that the topic will be covered in some depth-disadvantages include the idea that the information will be isolated to a particular term and not revisited throughout the program of study (Voltz, 2003). A number of studies have been conducted that examined the impact of a single course on student attitudes.…”

Merging General and Special Education Teacher Preparation Programs to Create an Inclusive Program for Diverse Learners

“…In applying the concepts of curriculum infusion, diversity-related content that is typically presented through a stand-alone course is instead infused throughout all courses or core courses of a program (Iceman-Sands, Anderson-Parsons, & Duffield, 2007;LaMontagne et al, 2002;Voltz, 2003). In this article, we describe a number of internal, organizational initiatives within a teacher education program designed to foster inclusive, responsive practices by newly licensed general and special education teacher candidates.…”

“…An alternative approach to the separate track, separate course approach to addressing issues such as student diversity are curriculum infusion or collaborative infusion models (Dieker, Voltz & Epanchin, 2002;Pugach, 2005;Voltz, 2003). In applying the concepts of curriculum infusion, diversity-related content that is typically presented through a stand-alone course is instead infused throughout all courses or core courses of a program (Iceman-Sands, Anderson-Parsons, & Duffield, 2007;LaMontagne et al, 2002;Voltz, 2003).…”

“…These requirements are related broadly to philosophical, legislative, and practice foundations of including students with disabilities in general education settings. Yet, historically, as well as in a majority of current teacher education programs, general education teachers are prepared in one track while special education teachers are prepared completely separately (Voltz, 2003), even though throughout both programs pre-service teachers are told about the need for schoolwide collaboration and team teaching (Kluth & Straut, 2003). Concurrently, in spite of the growing ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and ability differences in today's classrooms, teacher education programs continue to utilize pedagogy of decades past (Kea, Campbell-Whatley, & Richards, 2004;Taylor & Sobel, 2003).…”