Cross-Disciplinary Unification: Preparing Teachers for Inclusion

• In Event: 75.047 - Culturally Responsive Approaches to Preparing Early Childhood Teachers for Inclusive Classrooms

Abstract

The Unified Early Childhood (UEC) program is an interdisciplinary program designed to prepare professionals who possess the competencies to plan and implement culturally sensitive high quality, inclusive early education and intervention. It is a collaboration of multiple disciplines: specifically early childhood, special education, ESOL, school psychology, and reading.

The program is a 5-year preservice teacher education program culminating in a bachelor’s and master’s degree providing two teacher certifications (Preschool:0-3 years; PreK-Primary age 3 – grade 3) and two endorsements (ESOL; PreK-Disabilities). Students enter the program as juniors and are tracked from entrance through completing the program with a master’s degree and into their first year of professional practice. The program admitted its first cohort in the fall of 1995.

The structure of the curriculum parallels Florida’s early childhood certification guidelines and is approved by NCATE and FLDOE. Because only one cohort of students is admitted annually, the courses and field experiences are sequenced in a blocked manner scaffolding knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Multi-setting field experiences are provided to permit students to display skills across settings, ages, and grade levels (i.e., children with and without disabilities; those living in poverty; and second language learners.)

Early challenges to developing the program concerned the unification of multiple fields of study across different departments in the college, i.e., faculty resources and responsibilities, resistance and cross-departmental interactions, inclusive field placements, and college infrastructure. The development and implementation of the UEC program including challenges faced has been described in several publications (see Kemple, et al. 1994, Hartle, et al. 1997, & Correa, et al. 1997)

The UEC faculty engages in extensive monitoring and evaluation of the program. A study recently completed investigated changes in pre-service students’ beliefs about inclusion. As part of the ongoing evaluation of the program, the My Thinking About Inclusion (MTAI) (Stolber, Gettinger, & Goetz, 1998) questionnaire is administered when students enter the program as juniors and upon completion of the program with a M.Ed. (3 years). The MTAI is a 28-item measure comprised of three subscales: Core Perspectives, Expected Outcomes, and Classroom Practices. The use of the measure is to 1) assess changes in the students’ thinking about inclusion of young children with disabilities, and 2) assist program faculty to develop curricular and field experience activities that will best prepare students for inclusion. Pre-to post-program changes in the thinking of five cohorts of students (n=115) were examined. The results of the pre-post analysis showed significant change for 20 of the 28 items, indicating a more positive beliefs about the value and feasibility of inclusion of children with disabilities in early childhood programs. Data will be presented on changes, across the program, in pre-service teachers’ beliefs about inclusion.

The recent public policy push to evaluate teachers based on student progress has prompted a new area of research. We are currently preparing to examine UEC students’ knowledge of how their teaching impacts student learning. We will use the results of this study to make appropriate changes in the curriculum to facilitate our students’ understanding of this important concept.

Authors

• Hazel A. Jones, University of Florida

• Kristen Mary Kemple, University of Florida