Regular educators need to develop skills to work collaboratively with specialists in meeting the special needs of young children in the mainstreamed classroom. These skills include: (1) developing a common knowledge base; (2) using effective interpersonal strategies; (3) using a problem solving approach related to individual and classroom…

A renegotiation of relationships between special education faculties and other units of colleges of education is underway in order to prepare a new corps of regular teachers who are capable of carrying out their expanded roles in serving handicapped students. The federal government has provided eighty one "Deans' Grants" funds to be used mainly…

A program developed at West Virginia University trains special education teachers to be collaborative consultants to general educators implementing inclusive education. From 1991 to 1994, 30 special education teachers completed requirements in two areas of specialization for teaching students with mild disabilities. In addition, they completed a…

Children with mildly handicapping conditions spend a considerable amount of their instructional lives receiving instruction from general education teachers. At the preservice level, efforts to assist general education teachers have employed one of two models--the inclusion of special education topics into general education coursework and a…

This paper presents ideas on restructuring teacher education in the field of special education and the ensuring implications for training personnel. The reform of the American education system requires the simultaneous reform of the teacher education system. The different procedural standards, methodologies, and certification tracks used by each…

In teacher education settings, the extent of collaboration is far less evident than in K-12 education. There is some evidence that suggests, however, that this may be changing. Teaming among higher education faculty has been identified as one way to provide teachers with greater exposure to diverse fields of knowledge and practice, as well as to…

Johns Hopkins University and Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland, jointly sponsor the program "SUPPORTS for Least Restrictive Environment," a graduate program in special education which supports the vision of educating all students together in the general education classroom. In the practicum phase of their program, general…

This paper describes how Clive School, a small rural K-9 school in Alberta (Canada), used a team teaching approach and the best practices of staff development to facilitate the inclusion of special needs students into general education classrooms. Since September 1989, the staff at Clive School have been involved in developing their school into a…

Findings from a study, which examined the development of leadership skills and roles among the teachers in a professional development school (PDS), indicate the emergence of a nontraditional teacher leadership paradigm at the PDS. In contrast to typical teacher leadership models, in which carefully selected and screened teachers are placed in…

This final report describes a project that prepared 28 integration/support facilitators to work with school district personnel to plan and implement systems change to result in integrated service models for learners with moderate and severe disabilities within their local home schools. The project offered a 30 to 36 credit hour post-Master's…

This collection includes conference papers on the education of the deaf and hard of hearing, including: (1) "Discovering Classroom Dynamics through Action Research: Strategies That Encourage Critical Thinking during Lectures" (Keith Mousley and Vicki Robinson); (2) "Current Literacy Practices That Are Working" (Henry Teller); (3) "A Prototype…