This means that general education teachers are more likely than ever working with students with special needs. And yet, according to NPR reporting, the 10 largest universities in the country have a patchwork of special education requirements for future teachers.
With regard to the preparation programs for elementary teachers, which are designed to prepare students to gain state teaching certifications, six of these establishments require that education students take only one dedicated course in special education. The other four require more than one course.
But teacher preparation diploma paths are evolving. Some of the institutions that require only one course, including the Texas A&M University and the University of Florida Centrale, said they had invented the rest of their prices to instill practices intended to reach each learner – not only the typical.
And a new type of diploma is also becoming more common: double license or “unified” diploma programs aim to prepare students to gain both general education and the certification of special education. These programs grow across the country, especially in Texas A&M, at Wichita State University, Ohio State University and Iowa University.
The lessons of special education do not only occur in special education courses
The University of Florida Central teachers’ preparation program has been subjected to a gradual quarter of work over the past seven years. Mary Little is Professor and Program Coordinator at the UCF. She says that the school has focused on learning experience, and its special education course is therefore taught alongside a class internship.
“We are very (clearly) the theory and connection practice, in collaboration, in inclusive contexts,” explains Little.
When training teachers meet questions in their class classrooms, they can work them in real time with expert teachers. According to Little, the challenges that arise include the determination of appropriate learning agents for disabled students and work with individual education programs (IEP), which are legal documents that describe the services and housing to which each student is entitled.
Little says that the school is also intentional to submit inclusive practices throughout its teacher preparation program. This includes the accent placed on an educational practice known as the universal design for learning, or UDL. It favors flexible teaching methods to meet the needs of students who can learn in various ways.
For example, in a first year lesson on the addition of the basic, a teacher can use images, touching elements and virtual tools to describe not only the verbally mathematical problem, but also tangibly and visually.
“Which could have, in the past, have put figures and that the students look at these simple figures, or offer students a work sheet and having them reached outside the boxes or something has been extended with UDL,” explains Andrea Borowczak, director of the teacher training school of the UCF. “You try to be accessible to all students.”
This also means not to wait for a child to be identified as having a handicap before offering housing or specialized instructions.
“This really helps all our students (preparation of teachers) to carefully prepare the presentations and assessments of lessons, and the means to demonstrate learning on several ways, so that more students can access, control and demonstrate the curriculum and the knowledge of the content,” explains Little.
Little and Borowczak say that their school is also working on a new double license program in early childhood education and special education.
Currently, at least 4 of the 10 largest American universities offer double license or “unified” diploma programs that prepare teachers to work both in general education and classrooms of special education.
“All students are general education students”
Jennifer Kurthe chairs the Special Education Department of the University of Kansas, or Ku, who recently made his debut unified diploma Intended for future teachers who wish to serve in general or special classrooms. It requires eight other special education courses than the traditional school diploma of the school.
There is only one taking: for students to benefit from programs with two diplomas like this, people must choose to register, compared to traditional education programs.
Kurth says that this will require a passage from paradigm to a philosophy that “all students are general education students”.
“And if you leave a unified program knowing how to teach all students, you know how to individualize teaching; You know how to collaborate with people through disciplines; You know how to understand students, IEPs and understand the general education program, ”explains Kurth. “You just will be a more confident and more competent teacher.”
Kurth says it is too early to say if the department would go to a unified education program. But it is a possibility.
“I could honestly see a period in the near future when we have only one unified program, because I think it was very well received,” Kurth said. “We may be just a little careful when trying to make too many big changes at the same time.”
Ku’s assistant professor, Lisa Didion, does not hesitate to present the new unified school diploma program.
Last fall, during a special education lesson which is necessary for all the majors of KU education, she told her students that by joining the unified program, they would learn more strategies to achieve all learners.
“And this is what will really make a difference, it is that if we have general educators trained as special educators, then we will really start to move this (needle),” said Didion.
Benjamin Erickson, a junior specializing in elementary education, said that he was planning to go to the unified program. He said that as a disabled person, it is important for him to be part of a “best system”.
