Rationale: Special education
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than 13 percent of public school students receive special education services,1 and three-quarters of these students spend at least 40 percent of their school day in a general education classroom.2 These rates are much higher in poor, urban districts. Virtually every teacher will teach special education students at some point. Consequently, teachers should benefit from a "foundations" course in special education that provides an introduction to the instructional and policy issues related to high-incidence disabilities and that is taught by an individual with a high level of expertise on special education. (General education faculty may be unable to provide specific, cogent examples of pedagogical techniques. They may be unable to articulate the relationship between a particular pedagogy and the needs of students with disabilities, or they may lack familiarity with research on successful applications of pedagogical approaches.3)
A course in the foundations of special education lays the groundwork for subsequent methods coursework addressing additional techniques for differentiating instruction. While the relevant policy topics addressed may be the same for elementary and secondary teachers, the candidates are at a considerable disadvantage if they have to learn about the nature and implications of disabilities and general strategies of instructing students with disabilities in a single class whose curriculum addresses students from preschoolers to high school seniors.
2U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2010). The Digest of Education Statistics 2009 (NCES 2009- 013), Table 51. (http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=59)
3AERA Panel on Research and Teacher Education (2005), Studying teacher education: the report of the AERA Panel on Research and Teacher Education. Psychology Press, p. 566.
