Elementary special education teachers can enhance the transition of handicapped students into mainstreamed classes by careful planning and preparation of the regular class teachers, nonhandicapped students themselves. Followup communication with the regular class teacher must be maintained. (CL)

Regular and special educators from New York (a labeling state) and Massachusetts (a nonlabeling state) completed a measure of mainstreaming attitudes and special placement knowledge. Among results were that teachers were very consistent in their educational placements and that regular educators consistently chose more normalized settings then…

Special educators are encouraged to prepare the regular teacher for a handicapped child, familiarize the regular teacher with the individualized education program, prepare the regular students for the handicapped child's arrival, reinforce appropriate behavior in the handicapped child, involve others in the integration process, evaluate teacher…

As special needs children are integrated into regular education, new needs in teacher training have become apparent. Focusing on the United Kingdom, this paper discusses the training of special education teachers and the preservice education and inservice training of all teachers. (Author/JDD)

A qualitative case study design was used to investigate the extent that special education program serves the student or serves the organization. If special education serves the student, then a researcher should be able to identify resulting agency and emancipation among the students. However, if special education is serving the organization, then…

The task of hiring special education teachers may seem daunting because they serve in what is undeniably the most complex of teaching roles. This article provides guidance and suggestions for identifying key competencies that a viable special education teacher candidate should possess. Although many building leaders may still subscribe to gut…

Students with special needs are more likely to spend most or all of the school day in a typical classroom than they did in the past, when separate classrooms were the norm. As a result, teachers are faced with the challenge of teaching students with a wide array of learning needs. Marilyn Friend suggests that coteaching, a partnership in which a…

Major reform is occurring across our nation in delivering services to students with disabilities in secondary schools. The impetus for such change is the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and its challenges and implications for the secondary classroom. NCLB requires that all students be taught by a teacher who is highly qualified in the content area…

We examined the peer interactions and academic engagement of 23 middle and high school students with developmental disabilities within inclusive academic and elective classrooms. The extent to which students with and without disabilities interacted socially was highly variable and influenced by instructional format, the proximity of general and…

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, per Section 162.1136 RSMo, conducts an annual study of the educational status of eligible blind/visually impaired students and reports the findings to the Missouri Legislature on December 1st each year. The information contained in this report pertains to the twelve data elements…

One-hundred twenty-eight regular and 133 special educators responded to a questionnaire on mainstreaming. The two groups were similiar in their attitudes. Regular educators displayed more negative attitudes, but the differences rarely reached significance. Group differences became more apparent when attitudes concerning specific handicapping…

A monitoring form has been developed to allow special educators to learn of the handicapped child's progress in the regular class. Easy to use, the form states information on student performance relative to classmates, effort, completion of assignments, absences, and need for conferences with the special educator. (CL)

Sixty elementary grade and sixty special education resource teachers studied a child's "cumulative folder" including a photograph, label, and academic, behavioral, and social vignettes. Both groups agreed on behavioral potential and ignored labeling, but regular teachers had lower academic expectations for the handicapped children. (MC)

Resource room teachers, special educators, and regular education teachers participated in a federally funded inservice training program designed to analyze teacher needs related to instructional aspects of the Individual Education Program (IEP). (MER)

Two articles "Bonus in a Snowstorm" by S. Boland and "Featuring Agnes Clark" by G. Gear, focus on three teachers working with handicapped children. (SBH)