Robert A. Petrin

Issues in Special Education Teacher Recruitment, Retention, and Professional Development: Considerations in Supporting Rural Teachers

This study sought to obtain a current picture of special education teacher recruitment and retention in rural districts and to understand the professional development needs of rural special educators. Surveys, administered through telephone interviews with a national sample of special education administrators and teachers, confirmed the difficulties in hiring appropriately qualified teachers. Additional demands of the position may place teachers at risk for attrition. The authors identified important areas of professional development to support rural teachers in their positions: (a) working with paraprofessionals and parents, (b) low-incidence disabilities, (c) emotional and behavior disorders, (d) classroom management, (e) skills in collaboration and inclusive practices, and (f) curriculum content.

Peer Relations of Bullies, Bully-Victims, and Victims: The Two Social Worlds of Bullying in Second-Grade Classrooms

This study examined the social relations of bullies, victims, and bully-victims in second-grade classrooms. Bully-victims are identified as both bullies and victims. The sample consisted of 537 ethnically diverse second-grade students (247 boys, 290 girls) from 37 classrooms across 11 participating schools. Bullies, bully-victims, and victims tended to have somewhat distinct sociometric status and peer-assessed behavioral characteristics. Furthermore, bullies and bully-victims had distinct affiliation patterns. Bullies tended to be members of peer groups that contained few victims and most were in groups in which more than 50% of the members were not involved in bullying. In contrast, bully-victims tended to be members of groups that were composed primarily of bullies (i.e., bullies and bully-victims) and victims (i.e., victims and bully-victims). Implications for understanding the social dynamics of bullying in elementary school are discussed.

Bullying Involvement and the School Adjustment of Rural Students With and Without Disabilities

Bullying involvement status (i.e., bully, victim, bully–victim) and school adjustment were examined in a sample of 1,389 fifth graders (745 female, 644 male) including 145 special education students who were served in general education classrooms for at least 50% of the day. The sample was drawn from 35 rural schools in seven states across all geographic areas of the United States. School adjustment difficulties including internalizing and externalizing behavior problems were most pronounced in students who were identified as bully–victims (students who were identified as both victims and perpetrators of bullying). In contrast, bullies tended to have more positive interpersonal characteristics and fewer negative ones than youth who were identified as victims or bully–victims. Furthermore, compared to their nondisabled peers, students who received special education services had elevated rates of involvement as victims and bully–victims, but not as bullies. Implications for intervention are discussed.

Educational Sorting and Residential Aspirations Among Rural High School Students What Are the Contributions of Schools and Educators to Rural Brain Drain

An extended body of research has documented the outmigration of the “best and brightest” youth from rural areas. Some of this scholarship has suggested that rural schools and educators may be complicit in this process as they devote extra attention and resources to the highest achieving students—those most likely to leave their rural communities after high school. Using data from a national multimethod study, we find mixed support for this hypothesis. To the contrary, our data suggest that the highest-achieving rural students are among those with the greatest community attachment, and that student perceptions of local economic conditions are far more influential in shaping postsecondary residential aspirations than the advice of educators, or the poverty level of the school.

A ten‐year analysis of the post‐secondary outcomes of students with disabilities at The Pennsylvania State University

10.1080/02607476.2011.558291 Journal of Education for Teaching 0260-7476 (print)/1360-0540 (o line) Research in P ogress 2 11 Taylo & Fran is 370 002 11 B rb aHong bsh 5@psu.edu With increasing demand for postsecondary education, there has been an increasing number of students with disabilities attending colleges and universities (e.g. Hall and Belch 2000; Henderson 1999; Hodgkinson 1985; Wiseman, Emry, and Morgan 1988). Estimates indicate that increases range from 10% (Henderson 1999) to 26% among four-year colleges (Newman et al. 2009). Given that students with disabilities who obtain a college education are 63% more likely to find employment than students who do not have a college degree (Dutta, Kundu, and Schiro-Geist 2009), these increases are understandable. As they relate to investigations of post-secondary outcomes for students with disabilities, there are two axiomatic and consistent conclusions from the empirical literature. First, in comparison to their non-disabled peers, students with disabilities have significantly lower rates of pursuing and successfully completing college; and second, we know virtually nothing about how university support services such as those offered through an Office for Disability Services (ODS) contribute to retention, persistence and graduation. The proposed exploratory study represents the largest and first investigation in the USA that will purposefully analyse and track students who have sought disability services over a 10-year span (academic years 2000–2011). Using ex post-facto data on a non-probability purposive sample of approximately 6000 undergraduates, the research team will address the following research questions: