Mary T. Brownell

Factors That Predict Teachers Staying in, Leaving, or Transferring from the Special Education Classroom

We randomly surveyed 1,576 Florida special education teachers to examine factors that contribute to their propensity to leave or stay in the special education classroom or transfer to a new school. The variables identified, based on extensive review of the literature, included background, classroom, school district, and personal factors. We tracked our respondents for 2 years using a multinomial logit model to identify significant predictors of leaving, staying, or transferring. Results indicate that teachers left special education teaching primarily due to insufficient certification, perceptions of high stress, and perceptions of poor school climate. Special educators who transferred to a different school or district had perceptions of high stress and perceptions of poor school climate and were significantly younger than stayers.

Critical Features of Special Education Teacher Preparation A Comparison With General Teacher Education

Policy and program decisions involve choices among different ways of preparing teachers. These choices are shrouded in increasingly contentious debates as teacher shortages reach crisis proportions. Yet, research on special education teacher education is almost nonexistent. Findings from comparative research documenting the characteristics of effective teacher education programs can inform these choices, but these findings should be grounded in what we know from previous research in general teacher education. To assist educators, we have analyzed literature in general and special teacher education toward two ends. First, we present a framework, derived from work in general education, for analyzing teacher education programs. Second, we use this framework to analyze practice in teacher education in special education. Specifically, we conducted an exhaustive review of special education program descriptions and evaluations. We conclude by describing steps necessary to improve the special education teacher education research base.

Special Education Teacher Quality and Preparation: Exposing Foundations, Constructing a New Model:

The authors trace changes in conceptions of special education teacher quality and preparation in response to developments in special education research, policy, and practice. This developmental arc is a backdrop for understanding contemporary special education practice and charting future directions for preparing special education teachers. Federal policy, and recent research on teaching and learning, and the response-to-intervention (RTI) movement require a shift in thinking about how to prepare quality special education teachers and the expertise they need to be effective. To function effectively in RTI and fulfill federal highly qualified teacher requirements, special education teachers must master an increasingly complex knowledge base and sophisticated repertoire of instructional practices. The authors contend that preservice preparation is inadequate for this purpose and that preparation for special education teaching should build upon an existing knowledge base and demonstrated competence in classroom practice.

Learning from Collaboration: The Role of Teacher Qualities

In special education, professional collaboration is viewed as a powerful tool for helping teachers serve students with disabilities. An underlying assumption is that general educators will improve practice if they have opportunities to participate in collaborative professional development aimed at improving instruction for students with disabilities. Although sustainability studies suggest that teachers benefit from such collaboration, evidence also demonstrates that they profit differently. This study examined how teachers who readily adapt and adopt strategies acquired in collaboration differed from those who do not. Findings revealed differences in knowledge of curriculum, pedagogy, student management, and student-centered instruction, as well as differences in ability to reflect on and adapt instruction. Implications for improving professional collaboration in schools are provided.

Cognitive behavior modification of hyperactivity-impulsivity and aggression : A meta-analysis of school-based studies

Cognitive behavior modification (CBM) has been used for the past 25 years to mitigate maladaptive behaviors through the use of covert self-statements. Yet few reviewers have examined the use of CBM in school settings to reduce hyperactive-impulsive and aggressive behaviors in children and youth. This meta-analysis examined the outcomes of 23 studies. The mean effect size across all the studies was 0.74, and 89% of the studies had treatment participants who experienced greater gains than their control counterparts on posttest and maintenance measures when exposed to a treatment with a cognitive component. These results are discussed in terms of study characteristics and design, and recommendations for future research are made.

Special Education Teacher Education Research: Current Status and Future Directions.

In this article, the authors propose an agenda for special education teacher education researchers, with particular attention to policy work and studies of innovations in pre-service preparation, induction and mentoring, and professional development. Because previous research is limited and unfocused, the foundation for future research is weak, but opportunities to study questions of importance and interest are seemingly limitless. The authors discuss strategies to bolster the research foundation, namely, by oversampling special education teachers in the Schools and Staffing Survey and the Teacher Follow-Up Survey and by fostering the development of models of teacher development and related measures of teacher quality.

Attrition/Retention of Special Education Teachers: Critique of Current Research and Recommendations for Retention Efforts:

Teacher attrition will be the foremost issue confronting professionals in special education during the next decade. Several studies indicate that special educators are at greater risk to leave teaching than general educators. Combined with existing teacher shortages, special education teacher attrition raises serious questions about public educations ability to provide high-quality services to students wiab disabilities. Although researchers have identified some variables associated with the attrition of special education teachers, the findings are not comprehensive and are mostly inconsistent. Research-based models for improving the retention of special education teachers do not exist. A comprehensive research effort aimed at identifying the variables that influence the attrition of special education teachers is needed. Guidelines for such a research agenda are recommended.

Teachers Working Together: What Teacher Educators and Researchers Should Know:

Collaboration among professionals is an essential component of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the cornerstone of successful inclusion efforts. Our review of the literature, however, revealed little research documenting the collaborative efforts of general and special education teachers. We included literature in general and special education to determine the fundamental characteristics of successful collaboration, the barriers to collaboration, and the benefits of collaboration for teachers and students. Our findings are organized around the following themes: shared vision; commitment to collaboration; communities of care; frequent, positive, extended interactions; supportive, collaboration leadership; teacher benefits; and student benefits. Finally, we discuss future research issues and implications for teacher education in light of our findings.

NCLB and the Demand for Highly Qualified Teachers: Challenges and Solutions for Rural Schools:

Teacher shortages in special education have been a source of longstanding concern for professionals and parents involved in the education of students with disabilities. Because of their geographic location, culture, and lack of resources, rural administrators have always struggled to staff their schools with qualified special education teachers. No Child Left Behind and its definition of highly qualified teacher present new challenges to rural district administrators attempting to secure adequate numbers of special education teachers. In this paper, we outline the challenges rural administrators face in reducing special education teacher shortages, present strategies being used nationally and regionally to reduce strategies, and critique those strategies. We conclude our paper by advocating for a more comprehensive approach to solving teacher supply and demand problems, one that is driven by personnel data.

Crafting Quality Professional Development for Special Educators: What School Leaders Should Know.

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 strategies for reading and generating texts in those areas. We have worked with many teachers who resemble Karen and Bill. They desperately want (and need) to improve their practice for students with disabilities, but they often believe that schoolwide PD efforts have failed to meet their specific needs. This article draws on current research and our own PD work with teachers like Karen and Bill to obtain insights into the necessary considerations for crafting quality PD for special education teachers.