Preparing special educators for poverty settings.

Abstract

The authors highlight a graduate level course offered in an innovative teacher education project designed to prepare special educators from diverse backgrounds to work effectively with diverse student populations. The knowledge and competencies needed to work with students from impoverished backgrounds are emphasized. Impact on participants and implications are discussed.

Introduction

Widespread national concern with the recruitment, preparation, and retention of qualified special education teachers is reaching crisis proportions. Two highly critical areas have emerged--the shortage of special educators from underrepresented groups, and the shortage of qualified special education teachers. Furthermore, schools in predominantly minority communities, and those in high poverty areas with significant numbers of students with disabilities, are most severely impacted by the nationwide shortage of special education personnel (Burstein & Sears, 2001). Beard, Cegelka, Graves & Valles (1999) add,

   For the past two decades, we have been professionally challenged by
   the great ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and racial diversity of the
   school populations, the complexities of urban educational delivery,
   and the extreme shortages of qualified special education teachers
   (p. 1).

The requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) to disaggregate assessment data by various categories (i.e., economically disadvantaged, students with disabilities) serves notice that teachers must be prepared to teach all the children in their classrooms. Given the NCLB reporting measures, teacher preparation programs must address the issue of preparing teachers to better serve students from impoverished communities.

The majority of those entering the teaching profession will work in schools with "increasingly diverse student populations from a variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds, many of whom experience poverty, abuse, or other negative situations that can seriously affect their physical, cognitive, and emotional development" (Cabello & Burstein, 1995, p. 285). Meeting the needs of these students requires a thorough understanding of issues related to working with culturally and linguistically diverse students with a range of abilities and needs (Park, Turnbull & Turnbull III, 2002).

What specific knowledge and skills do special education teachers require to work with students with disabilities from high poverty backgrounds and their families? How do we best prepare the teachers? These questions were the focus of a federally funded project to train special educators to become effective facilitators of best practices in highly challenging and diverse settings where students experience poverty. In this article the authors describe an innovative course that was developed as part of the project. The goal of the course was to prepare special educators from diverse backgrounds to work with diverse student populations from impoverished backgrounds. The evaluation data are also presented as well as implications from the investigation on the impact of the course and the specific course requirements.

The Course

The course, Challenges of Poverty in Special Education, was offered through the special education program at a major southeastern university that serves a metropolitan population of over 1.7 million. The urban demographic profile is 61percent Caucasian, 27 percent Black, 18 percent Hispanic, and 3 percent Asian-Pacific Islander. There are 151,826 students in the local school system with an ethnic distribution of 44 percent Caucasian, 29 percent Black, 23 percent Hispanic, and 3 percent Asian-Pacific Islander. One of the goals of the university is to prepare teachers to meet the challenges of teaching the diverse student population in the local school systems, including teaching students from high poverty settings.

The special education program, in which the course was taught, offers a degree of Master of Arts in Exceptional Education (M.A.) for individuals seeking their initial teacher certification. The master's program consists of seven specialization courses, an internship, and a set of core educational foundation courses. The specialization coursework includes (a) Instructional Strategies PreK-6, (b) Instructional Strategies 6-12, (c) Teaching Spoken and Written Language, (d) Assessment and Curriculum Prescriptions for the Exceptional Population, (e) Seminar: Critical Issues in Special Education, (0 Organization & Collaboration in Special Education, and (g) Methods of Behavioral Management.

When The Challenges of Poverty in Special Education course was scheduled as a Critical Issues in Special Education Seminar in a summer semester and lasted eight weeks. The course sessions met for a period of four hours one evening per week. The participants took the course in the first semester in their M.A. program of study.

Competencies Active participatory experiences provided the participants opportunities to develop competencies to: (a) identify ethical issues and needs for diverse and high poverty settings, (b) describe roles and responsibilities of collaborative team members, (c) develop parent sessions to address parents' issues and concerns, (d) develop guidelines for forming home/school partnerships, and (e) identify professional and community resources to enhance professional development and educational programs. Competencies and best practice indicators for working in diverse and high poverty areas were derived from an extensive review of literature (Burstein & Sears, 1998; Day-Vines, 2000; Utley, Delquadri, Obiakor & Mires, 200; Williams, 2001; Wood, 2002, Zetlin, MacLeod & Michener, 1998). The competencies were grouped within three domains: impact of poverty, families and community, and teaching challenges.

Domain I: Impact of poverty provided an exploration of challenges faced by teachers and students in high poverty urban schools. Examination and discussion of the research focused on developing awareness of the unique needs of students in high poverty schools, reviewing successful models and practices, and linking the information to required field experiences.

Domain II: Families and Community examined barriers to parent-related and school-related collaboration. Strategies to overcome these obstacles were explored. Participants identified strategies to enable teachers to address social problems with specific focus on supporting families to access community resources including health, mental health and social services.

Domain III. Teaching Challenges targeted participants' ability to develop knowledge and skills that promote teacher renewal and ongoing professional growth. Emphasis was placed on communication skills, reflective teaching principles and practices, and innovative approaches to teaching challenges in highly diverse settings.

Texts Three texts were selected for use in this course. Two of the texts, "A Framework For Understanding Poverty (3rd ed.)" (Payne, 2003) and the accompanying, "A Framework For Understanding Poverty: Modules 1-9 Workbook" by Ruby Payne, (1998) focus on the culture of poverty and strategies to overcome some of the challenges of poverty in the classroom setting. The third text, "No Excuses: Lessons From 21 High-Performing High-Poverty Schools," by Samuel Carter (2001) emphasizes that students can excel in academic achievement in high-poverty settings and describes twenty-one schools that have done so despite the challenges of poverty.

Instruction A co-teaching model was used, where a professor and doctoral student collaborated to deliver the course content. The opportunity to share ideas and facilitate activities presented a major benefit for the course instructors. The time of the course offering (summer, abbreviated) and collaborative planning time for course instructors presented challenges. Both instructors were involved in other courses and assigned duties, thus opportunities to collaborate face-to-face were limited. Much of the planning was done through email.

Course Assignments The course assignments consisted of weekly readings, written assignments, active class participation, completion of a special topics project and a final activity.

Written Assignments There were two major written assignments for the course. The first was a "Reflections" paper. Participants were required to undertake a 10-hour field experience in which they volunteered at a facility that serves children with special needs and their families. Upon completion of the volunteer hours, participants wrote a paper in which they stated their initial expectations and uncertainties about volunteering in this self-selected site. They described their experiences in working with individuals who are considered at risk for academic and/or socio-emotional failure. The second major written assignment focused on a self-selected special topic related to poverty (i.e. homelessness, teenage pregnancy, mental illness). Participants were also required to do a group presentation.

Active Participation Participants assumed a major role in discussing course readings. The seminar format of the course presented the instructors and participants with the opportunity to engage in rich conversations about the participants' volunteer experiences, weekly readings, and other relevant literature pertaining to the evening's topic.

Special Topic Project Participants chose a topic of interest and developed a volunteer experience proposal. Once the proposal was approved and appropriate community contacts were established, participants began their volunteer field experience. For example, if a participant chose issues of homelessness, there were expected to spend at least 10 hours working with individuals who were homeless. Other topics and experiences investigated were single parenting and poverty, mental illness, and teen-age pregnancy.

Final Class Activity The culminating activity for the course was a panel discussion on poverty. Members of the community were invited to speak to the participants about the culture of poverty and its effect on education. The guests included school principals, general educators, exceptional educators, doctoral students, and professors.

Evaluation Method

Participants Nine graduate level M.A. students participated in the seminar. Participants included three African Americans, two Latinos, and four Caucasians. All were seeking their initial teacher certification in special education.

Evaluation Instruments Two instruments were used to evaluate the course. The first was the traditional University Student's Perceptions of Instruction Form. The University evaluation tool was completed during the last class meeting. The second instrument, a Project Survey developed by project personnel, was completed two weeks after the course. This survey asked participants to rank order the value of the course competencies and asked questions related to impact of the specific course assignments from a personal and professional perspective. The survey also provided participants the opportunity to self-report their knowledge and skills prior to taking the course and after taking the course. The project personnel developed the Project Survey based on the competency domains previously described. The Project Survey was distributed and collected by the first author, independent of the instructors, two weeks after final grades were submitted. Project personnel aggregated the data and reported the responses as rank order for the entire class.

Results

University Instrument--Students Perceptions of Instruction Overall teacher effectiveness, as evaluated by the participants ranged from excellent to very good. One constant issue that participants raised was lack of time in the summer semester and length of time (4 hours) for each class. The participants suggested future offerings of the course should meet twice per week for two hours each class meeting.

Project Survey The competencies rated as most valuable were: (a) identify sociocultural factors that influence student development; (b) design a safe and supportive school experience responsive to cultural differences; (c) develop lessons that discuss characteristics of classrooms that promote a community of learners; (d) demonstrate knowledge of educational practices designed to develop self efficacy, social interaction skills, and interpersonal problem solving; (e) identify avenues of support and seeking out mentoring individuals for assistance; and (f) develop skills of grant writing

The order of personal value of the course assignments from highest to lowest was volunteering, followed by class sessions, weekly readings, and finally, written assignments and special topics project. The order of professional value of the course assignments from most to least was weekly readings, followed by volunteering, special topic project and finally written assignments.

The final component of the survey asked participants to provide comments related to their rankings of the assignments within the course. The comments from the participants focused almost exclusively on the value of the volunteer experience. One student stated, "Volunteering gave me the opportunity to observe some of the sociocultural influences that students will come to school with. Weekly readings will keep me updated on local/state news in the community." A second student offered the following, "I liked the volunteer experience ... new teachers can see the reality in person."

Discussion

As teacher education programs strive to prepare educators for the changing demographics in the nation's schools, a closer look at issues of poverty and diversity is warranted. The demographic trends for poverty in the United States continue to worsen. The Census Bureau reports that poverty rate in the South increased from 12.8 percent in 2000 to 13.5 percent in 2001. During this period rates in other geographic areas did not change. When looking at race/ethnicity, the percentage of African Americans in poverty was 22.7 percent with Hispanics closely behind at 21.4 percent, while Caucasians comprised 9.9 percent. Approximately 9.2 percent of all families in the United States lived below poverty in 2001. Of these families, 20.7 percent were African-American, 7.8 percent identified as Asian and Pacific Islander, and 19.4 percent were Hispanic (Proctor & Dalaker, 2002). Based on these statistics, it is imperative that teacher education programs incorporate the development of knowledge and skills related to issues of diversity and poverty into their programs of study.

Participants report personal and professional gains in all areas targeted in the course. The authors believe that because of the substantial amount of critical knowledge and meaningful skills to be taught, the infusion of diversity and issues of poverty through existing course curriculum is unlikely to adequately prepare educators to work in high-poverty settings. There should be specific coursework that addresses the critical issues and challenges of high-poverty need settings so that educators are adequately prepared to teach in these settings. In addition to specific coursework, pre-service educators need experiences in these settings. A key finding that amplifies the importance of experiences is the impact of volunteering on participants. The field experiences, volunteer hours, and research projects provided opportunities for participants to connect personally, as well as professionally, with the subject content. Multiple experiences in these settings will help educators build and maintain effective strategies for working with diverse students in high-poverty settings.

Implications

We believe the impact on the participants provides evidence that supports advocacy of specialized coursework in teacher preparation programs. No doubt larger scale studies comparing a competency infusion model with a model that has a separate course on the impact of poverty are warranted. However, given the reporting requirement of NCLB, teacher preparation programs must act now to better prepare teachers for the educational climate in which they are most likely to work. Since a majority of teachers entering the profession will work with diverse student population, many whom experience poverty (Cabello & Burstein, 1995), Institutes of Higher Education must prepare teachers to be competent and able to effectively work with diverse students and their families, including those from impoverished communities. The authors presented one such successful alternative to accomplish this daunting task.

References

Beard, K., Cegelka, P., Graves, A., & Valles, G. (1999, November). Recruiting and Retaining Diverse Students. Poster presentation at Teacher Education Division of Council for Exceptional Children. Palm Springs, California.

Burstein, N.D. & Sears, S. (1998). Preparing on-the-job teachers for urban schools: Implications for teacher training. Teacher Education and Special Education, 21,47-62.

Cabello, B., & Burstein, N. D. (1995). Examining teachers' beliefs about teaching in culturally diverse schools. Journal of Teacher Education, 46(4), 285-294.

Carter, S. C. (2001). No excuses: Lessons from 21 high-performing, high poverty schools. Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation.

Day-Vines, N. L. (2000). Ethics, power, and privilege: Salient issues in the development of multicultural competcncies for teachers serving African American children with disabilities. Teacher Education and Special Education, 23, 3-18.

Park, J., Turnbull, A. P., & Turnbull III, H. R. (2002). Impacts of poverty on quality of life in families of children with disabilities. Exceptional Children, 68(2), 151-170.

Payne, R. K. (2003). A framework for understanding poverty (3rd ed.). Highlands, TX: aha! Process Inc.

Payne, R. K. (1998). A framework for understanding poverty: Modules 1-9 workbook. Highlands, TX: aha! Process Inc.

Proctor, B. D., Dalaker, J. (2002). Poverty in the United States, 2001, current population reports (U.S. Census Bureau, Current Populations Reports P60-219). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. Economics and Statistics Administration. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 469530)

Recruiting New Teachers, Inc. (RNT). (2000). The urban teacher challenge: Teacher demand and supply in the great city schools. Retrieved November November 9, 2001 from www.cgcs.org

Utley, C. A., Delquadri, J. C., Obiakor, F. E., & Mims, J. C. (2001). General and special educator's perceptions of teaching strategies for culturally and linguistically diverse students. Teacher Education and Special Education, 23(1), 34-50.

Williams, D. T. (2001). Ethical leadership in schools servicing African American children and youth. Teacher Education and Special Education and Special Education, 24, 38-47.

Wood, J. W. (2002). Adapting instruction to accommodate students in inclusive settings (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Zetlin, A. G., MacLeod, E., & Michener, D. (1998). Professional development of teachers of language minority students through university-school partnership. Teacher Education and Special Education, 21 (2), 109-120.

Miller, Ed.D. is assistant professor in the Exceptional Education Program. Wienke, Ed.D. is professor and Chair of the Department of Child, Family, and Community Sciences. Lue, Ph.D. is professor in the Department of Educational Studies. Richmond is a doctoral candidate in Exceptional Education.