Teacher Education Reform within University Special Education Programs.

Abstract

Colleges and universities across the country are making efforts in teacher education reform in order to better the training of instructors and therefore the education of children. Our journey-to redesign our teacher education program in special education at the University of Cincinnati-began in 1985 with internal events (new faculty members, changes in department head) and external events ( changes in our profession) resulting in a critical period of self-examination. After we began this process, the College of Education at the University of Cincinnati accepted an invitation to become a member of the Holmes Group. 1 Membership in the Holmes Group committed all teacher education programs in the College of Education to a comprehensive reform agenda, with a central focus on urban education. In previous years the college's connections with schools and teachers, and among ourselves as teacher educators, depended primarily on personal relationships initiated and sustained by faculty, and not on institutional and programmatic agreements. We now had an opportunity to pursue program reform efforts within a wider context (the entire College of Education) and to have an impact on teacher education programs beyond special education. As we reviewed artifacts for this article ( documents prepared for college administration, state certification review, NCATE reviews, and minutes from program meetings), we observed several phenomena that were key to changes in our program: learning to talk with one another, leaving the safety of our own group, and developing a special education core. As we shifted the focus of our teacher education efforts, we were able to articulate our program more carefully and work with other teacher education programs within the college as well as develop new relationships with teachers in the Professional Practice Schools (also known as Professional Development Schools). These changes were facilitated and supported by a collegewide reform effort now referred to as the Cincinnati Initiative for Teacher Education. In this article then, we describe two aspects of interrelated changes in teacher education. We share various aspects of our journey through the reform process, while describing the influences of collegewide program reform and changes within teacher education on our thinking. Because the reform continues, we report on our work to date, the challenges we confronted, and our next steps.