A shortage of certified teacher candidates nationwide is especially challenging in the field of special education. U.S. rural school districts are even more impacted due to limited access to universities because of geographical distance. In this program description, we look at the University Louisville's fully online special education alternative…

Over the years, examination of barriers to the development and implementation of Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) programs has gained traction. This has led the profession to investigate the relevance of SAE. In the conducted studies, the profession continually notes that SAE remains a foundational component and perhaps the only…

Rural schools have their own identity, influenced by the context in which they are immersed and their multigrade classroom structure. According to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, educational institutions must ensure the preservation of the particularities of the environment by taking into account the territorial dimension as a…

ICT training can be conceptualised based on affordance theory that offers a lens to observe how ICT training is perceived. This study examines teachers' perceived value of ICT training and how they developed their awareness of affordances in the pedagogical practice of ICT. Since government teacher training does not cover ICT, ICT training along…

In this empirical paper, we discuss teachers' capabilities in implementing inclusive education. The background to this paper is that teachers have challenges in implementing inclusive education in South African primary schools. The study is underpinned by critical emancipatory research (CER), which advocates for peace, hope, equality, freedom, and…

Multilingual learners (MLs) represent a substantial, growing segment of the PreK--12 population, including in rural areas. Several forces contribute to the increase of ML students in rural schools (e.g., immigrant labor, refugee crises). As we undergo a major cultural shift from a society that was (misguidedly) viewed as monolingual to one that is…

Enrollment in traditional special education teacher preparation programs has declined while enrollment in alternative preparation programs has increased in Georgia (Georgia Insights, 2024). Since alternative preparation programs have become the viable recruitment vein for rural schools challenged to fill special education teaching vacancies,…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how rural North Carolina teachers, after completing the National Board Certification process, describe how they apply systematic thinking to their teaching practice, reflect on the experience, and learn from experience. Grounded in David Kolb's Experiential Learning Model and The…

The Grow Your Own Teacher (GYOT) program addresses the shortage of qualified teachers by recruiting and training community residents to become qualified teachers. These programs look and feel like community-building strategies instead of teacher pipeline strategies. The GYOT initiative is not new, but the mainstream absorption of the GYOT…

Although the number of multilingual (ML) students continues to rise nationally, little scholarly attention has been paid to the education of "rural" ML students and families. There is critical need to better understand who rural ML students are and how to align their linguistic knowledge and strengths with appropriate instructional…

The prevalence of Autism is increasing exponentially in today's classrooms, such that general education teachers face a broad range of challenges within inclusive settings (Leech, 2008). This study investigated the degree of teacher preparedness in teaching autistic students in general education and special education classrooms by examining the…

Teachers across the circumpolar north often share similar experiences working in small communities in remote areas with distinctive cultures and livelihoods. However, teacher education programmes tend to be universal, ignoring an ecological understanding of teaching. This paper describes the findings from a desktop study investigating the specific…

The purpose of this study was to assess the perceptions of middle school math teachers, as captured by survey ratings, of the frequency and quality of professional development programs. The study further examined the relationship of these perceptions to the degree to which professional development increased self-efficacy and social connections.…

In the current study we used telehealth to train six educators from three rural schools to conduct multiple stimulus without replacement (MSWO) preference assessments. Three of the educators were subsequently trained to implement functional analysis (FA) of problem behavior. Behavioral skills training (BST) was used to teach each educator to…

This qualitative study was prompted by the need to establish the challenges and prospects of quality Multi-grade Teaching in satellite primary schools. Through in-depth interviews with the Teachers in Charge of the schools and Focus Group Interviews with teachers, data were generated and analysed thematically. The Three-level Typology created by…