Providing Access for All Students: Course Design for Special and General Educators

• In Event: 53.048 - Cultural Clashes in Teacher Preparation: Languaging in Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Abstract

This study depicts the development of a new course with the goal of providing general and special educators improved understandings and strategies for implementing multi-tiered systems of support in educational settings for all students. The study presents a telling case (Mitchell, 1984) of course design by faculty from general and special education who joined two different philosophies and perspectives.
In telling cases, individuals or groups can be selected as tracer units making visible what members need to know, experience (or not), and understand, produce, or predict (Heath, 1982). Participants in this study included Ginger, a special education (SE) faculty member, and Sue, a general education (GE) faculty member. The design process occurred across six months and data from this study included standards and course syllabi from special and general education (i.e., assignments, activities, assessments, and readings), guiding principles for the dual licensure program, individual interviews with team members, meetings notes, and field notes from course design. Analyses included identification of incomprehensible moments (i.e. rich points) which served as anchor points tracing forwards and backwards in the data to identify each of the faculty members’ perspectives.
An incomprehensible moment was a clash between Sue and Ginger related to how to prepare preservice teachers in this dual licensure program in classroom management strategies. In tracing forwards and backwards through the data, differing definitions and practices became visible between the two study participants. Sue’s perspectives of classroom management was influenced by her emphasis on whole classroom practices, perceived Universal Design of Learning (UDL) (CAST, 2011) perspectives, and general curriculum design as effective practices for managing and promoting student learning. Whereas, Ginger’s perspectives included discussion around proactive positive behavior supports, multi-tiered systems of support, and an emphasis on individual needs. Sue assumed that Ginger did not implement a UDL perspective within the special education management course, yet, through dialogue between Ginger and Sue, Ginger found that UDL, a term she did not use in her practice was an important component of a multi-tiered system of support perspective. Thus, this clash was mediated when faculty from two disciplines were able to identify parallels between the practices they were teaching preservice teachers in the separate classes, and through merging these practices in the newly designed course.
Ultimately, they found common ground when they used the guiding principles created as part of the dual licensure program development to frame individual course development. Both faculty members realized how critical each other’s perspectives were when designing a course to prepare teachers to meet the needs of all students. This study is significant in terms of the need to create open dialogue about what it means to respect other perspectives and that no one perspective works with all children. This finding is significant as faculty prepare a new generation of teachers to best educate the evolving diversity of the students in K-12 classrooms.

Authors

• Kristall J. Day, Ohio Dominican University

• Laurie Joy Katz, The Ohio State University