What tools are in the toolkit of an excellent special educator, and how can teacher preparation programs provide these tools in the most efficient, effective way possible? This practical, clearly written book is grounded in current research and policy as well as the author's extensive experience as a teacher educator. It identifies what special education teachers need to know to work competently with students with a wide variety of learning challenges and disabilities. Chapters present specific guidelines for helping teacher candidates build critical skills for instruction and assessment, get the most out of field placements, and collaborate successfully with other school personnel and with parents.

Compilations of research on teacher preparation often include no more than a cursory mention of the specific roles and needs of special education teachers. Although the work that special education teachers perform does indeed differ from the work of classroom teachers, teacher preparation in the two fields has much in common. The purpose of this seven-part handbook is to expand our knowledge of teacher education broadly by providing an in-depth look at the most up-to-date research on special education teacher preparation. Opening chapters ground the collection in political and economic context, while subsequent sections delve deeply into issues related to the current state of our special education workforce and offer insights into how to best prepare and sustain that workforce. Ultimately, by illuminating the particularities of special education teacher preparation, this landmark handbook addresses the state of current research in the field and sets an agenda for future scholarship.

Redesigning Special Education Teacher Preparation describes both challenges and possible solutions to redesigning and restructuring high-incidence teacher preparation programs so graduates will meet the Highly Qualified Teacher requirements and be prepared to teach students with high-incidence disabilities. This powerful new text discusses many possible reforms, including field-based teacher preparation, a focus on evidence-based core practices and teacher moves, collaboration with K–12 school-based partners as teacher educators, interdisciplinary collaboration across university faculty, and a grounding in current expectations for high-stakes accountability and program evaluation.

What every special education teacher needs to know to survive and thrive A Survival Guide for New Special Educators provides relevant, practical information for new special education teachers across a broad range of topic areas. Drawing on the latest research on special educator effectiveness and retention, this comprehensive, go-to resource addresses the most pressing needs of novice instructors, resource teachers, and inclusion specialists. Offers research-based, classroom-tested strategies for working with a variety of special needs students Covers everything from preparing for the new school year to behavior management, customizing curriculum, creating effective IEPs, and more Billingsley and Brownell are noted experts in special educator training and support This highly practical book is filled with checklists, forms, and tools that special educators can use every day to help ensure that all special needs students get the rich, rewarding education they deserve.

The purpose of the Handbook of Special Education is to help profile and bring greater clarity to the already sprawling and continuously expanding field of special education. To ensure consistency across the volume, chapter authors review and integrate existing research, identify strengths and weaknesses, note gaps in the literature, and discuss implications for practice and future research. The second edition has been fully updated throughout to take into account recent changes to federal laws as well as the most current academic research, and an entirely new section has been added on research methods in special education.

The purpose of this book is to provide a forum for an interdisciplinary scholarly dialogue with regard to preparing teachers for early childhood special education. In addition, it is aimed at examining and making available relevant and most recent scholarship to practitioners and at addressing critical issues and perspectives around preparing effective educators for the 21 century classroom and the future. This book intends to illuminate a complex and challenging task of preparing effective educators through the lenses of several educational disciplines, including but not limited to, teacher education, general education, special education, early childhood education, and urban education. The information in this work will focus on several educational disciplines that have the most immediate implications for teacher preparation and practice. The overall educational knowledge base will be enhanced due to the educational interdisciplinary approach. This has additional implications for teacher education, special education, educational leadership, curriculum and instruction, educational policy, and urban education, to name a few. The multidimensional nature of the book gives it the freedom to highlight multiple and diverse voices while at the same time providing a forum for different (and sometimes divergent) methodologies, philosophies, and ideologies.

Special education teachers, as a significant segment of the teaching profession, came into their own with the passage of Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, in 1975. Since then, although the number of special education teachers has grown substantially it has not kept pace with the demand for their services and expertise. The roles and practice of special education teachers have continuously evolved as the complexity of struggling learners unfolded, along with the quest for how best to serve and improve outcomes for this diverse group of students. High-Leverage Practices in Special Education defines the activities that all special educators needed to be able to use in their classrooms, from Day One. HLPs are organized around four aspects of practice collaboration, assessment, social/emotional/behavioral practices, and instruction because special education teachers enact practices in these areas in integrated and reciprocal ways. The HLP Writing Team is a collaborative effort of the Council for Exceptional Children, its Teacher Education Division, and the CEEDAR Center; its members include practitioners, scholars, researchers, teacher preparation faculty, and education advocates--Amazon.com