Social skills instruction and appropriate individualization of instruction can help mainstreamed handicapped children become accepted by their peers. Modeling (practicing demonstrated behaviors), prompting (correcting behavior when signaled), and feedback (giving corrective guidance) are used to teach the handicapped student such important social…

Teachers recognize that students may successfully perform diverse actions and not understand what they have done. Several classroom techniques are employed to increase students' comprehension, such as giving more time to practice and accepting students'"growth" errors. In order to understand, children must be given the opportunity to…

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent a set of teacher competencies thought to be generic were considered to be essential by all teachers regardless of their subject or level. A list of 52 competencies was compiled to be submitted to participants in a comprehensive survey of education professionals-- elementary and secondary…

At a literacy conference in December 1998, British Prime Minister Tony Blair defined phonics as "the skilled process of teaching children how the 44 sounds in the English language are represented by a letter or group of letters." But 4 years down the track, several recent reports from both national and international bodies continue to…

Argues that the problem with teaching today is too little research. Characterizes research-oriented teachers as spokesmen in the Classical Greek legal sense: they have firsthand knowledge, are eyewitnesses and discoverers or generators of knowledge. They are not dependent on others and speak with the force of authority. (JMF)

The aim of this study is to develop a new approach to help both 4th year students and 1st year students to get the utmost benefit from application activities. This new approach will provide 4th year students with an experience of teaching practice and also preparation of 1st student teachers to teaching practice process before they start their…

The paper reviews the literature on the four major competency areas for a special educator: assessment, instruction, consultation, and administration. It then looks at the North Carolina Appraisal Instrument and concludes that, since instruction is the predominant area assessed by this instrument, a revised instrument is needed to assess the other…

The Toledo Partnership Committee for Teaching, created to improve teaching and preservice teacher education, includes representatives from Bowling Green State University, the University of Toledo, the Toledo Federation of Teachers, the Toledo Association of Administrative Personnel, the Toledo Public Schools, and the Toledo Catholic Schools…

This paper examines the recent research on the change process, with emphasis on implementation of educational innovations, to see what messages might be implied for teachers and their teaching skills. How various aspects of the change process research lead to the identification and description of these kinds of skills for teachers are described.…

Practical experiences have grown dramatically in teacher education programs, apparently from a general consensus of the rightness of such experiences as well as the vigorous criticisms of teacher education programs by practicing teachers. A review of research concerning practical experience in teacher education indicates that the knowledge and…

A series of field tests run over a 2 year period assessed the ability of 125 special education and regular teachers (5 inservice and 1 preservice group) to detect and accurately describe basic attributes of reading miscues before and after training using the Hypothesis/Test Reading Modules. A surprising outcome was the virtual lack of spontaneous…

The paper describes a study of the practicum experiences for 39 participants in a diploma program for education of the hearing impaired at the University of British Columbia. Students were ranked according to 59 competencies in four categories (lesson planning, communication skills, classroom climate and behavior management, and professional…

This paper outlines the increasing prospects for improving the problem solving component of future mathematics programs. Of particular interest is the development of a viable growth schema for general problem solving strategies and skills. The plan presented here provides for five levels of problem solving sophistication. The main body of the…

An operational, noncategorical, performance based teacher education program for the preparation of teachers of the handicapped at the Department of Special Education, University of Northern Iowa is described in the text of a panel presentation. Panel members address historical perspectives of the training program, key features of the program,…

The communication practices and training in communication activities of classroom teachers in Hawaii were examined by surveying 370 elementary, intermediate, and secondary school teachers in Hawaii. The results supported the claims that the classroom constitutes an ongoing communication event composed of varied speech activities and that the…