The SAGE Handbookof Special EducationReimagining Special.docx

The SAGE Handbook
of Special Education
Reimagining Special Education
Contributors: Lani Florian
Editors: Lani Florian
Book Title: The SAGE Handbook of Special Education
Chapter Title: "Reimagining Special Education"
Pub. Date: 2007
Access Date: September 26, 2015
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications Ltd
City: London
Print ISBN: 9781412907293
Online ISBN: 9781848607989
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781848607989.n2
Print pages: 8-22
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781848607989.n2
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note that the pagination
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book.
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©2007 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. SAGE
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Page 3 of 29 The SAGE Handbook of Special Education:
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781848607989.n2
Chapter 2: Reimagining Special Education
Introduction
Positioned as it is, as both the problem of and the solution to
injustice in education, the
field of special education occupies contested terrain.
Throughout its history, advocates
and critics have simultaneously hailed and condemned it as both
a means of achieving
equal educational opportunity and a perpetrator of injustice in
education. The historian
of education, Martin Lazerson (1983), articulated the issue well:
From its inception, some have condemned special education for
not
being available to enough children, and some, especially parents
of handicapped children, have demanded more as well as better
programs. Yet others have condemned special education for too
readily
identifying children as handicapped, and too readily placing
them
in segregated classes. All, from within and outside the
educational
system, have acknowledged that special education has been the
least
accepted of our public school programs. To paraphrase John
Dewey,

if a society ought to provide for its children that which the best
parent
would provide, special education stands out as a measure of the
failure
of public responsibility. (p. 16)
Though Lazerson was writing before the full implementation of
the human and civil
rights laws and policies that were adopted in many countries
since the 1970s, the
dilemmas of access and equity that he articulated have
continued, despite the hope and
the promise of national rights-based policies intended to resolve
them, such as P.L. 94–
142 (now part of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
– IDEA) in the United
States, National Law 118/71 in Italy, or PL. 10/2002, Ley
Orgánica de Calidad de la
Educación (LOCE) in Spain.
This chapter considers dilemmas of access and equity by
examining the role of
special education in the context of the larger education system.
It explores the right
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to education, the power of the human need to mark some people
as deviant, the
corresponding concept of normal, and the conundrum this
creates for special education.
It argues that future progress in addressing the dilemmas of
access and equity will
require a reimagining of what special education is and can
become. The chapter calls
for changes in thinking about provision and practice, and
suggests what some of these
changes might entail.
[p. 8 ↓ ]
The Promise of Education
Education is defined as a universal right by Article 26 of the
United Nations Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (1948). As such, it is commonly
invoked for the purposes
of establishing standards for the right to education (access) and
for human rights in
education (equity). Thus education is both a human right and a
means of achieving
human rights. As the concept of human rights has evolved,
education has also come
to be seen as a development right (Gearon, 2003), and as an
economic, social and
cultural right (Tomasevski, 2001). Though there is great
philosophical promise in a
rights concept of education, support for it is often based on a
belief in its power to
transform society (Grubb & Lazerson, 2004). Over the past
century, education has been

seen as a remedy to many forms of social injustice. Where
compulsory schooling exists,
it has helped to eliminate child labour (Tomasevski, 2003), and
more schooling for more
people is considered the solution to social and economic
problems in many countries
(Grubb & Lazerson, 2004). As a result, support for education is
justified throughout
the world, not simply as a human right but as an investment in
the ‘development’
of individuals and societies to meet the demands of a market
economy and as a
requirement of a democratic society. World Bank policy makes
this position clear:
Education is central to development. It empowers people,
strengthens
nations, and is key to the attainment of the Millennium
Development
Goals. Already the world's largest external financier of
education, the
World Bank is today more committed than ever to helping
countries
develop holistic education systems aimed both at achieving
Education
For All (EFA) and building dynamic knowledge societies that
are key
knowledge

of 29 The SAGE Handbook of Special Education:
to competing in global markets through Education for the
Knowledge
Economy (EKE). (World Bank, n.d.)
Here support for education is seen not as a remedy for injustice
or a human right
but as a way to strengthen economic competitiveness. The co-
mingling of rhetoric
about human rights, nation building and compettive markets is
difficult to unravel.
Linking the human right to education with education for the
purpose of economic
independence for individuals and prosperity for nations makes it
difficult to see them
as two distinct policies. Yet this is what we must do if we are to
understand the role of
special education in contemporary society.
The Role of Special Education
When access to education is widened it puts pressure on
education systems and
schools to accommodate increasingly diverse student
populations. Indeed, as many
have documented, special education is one of the mechanisms
by which such diversity
has been accommodated. For many years special education was
seen as a fulfilment
of the right to education for children with disabilities and there
were expectations that
the implementation of rights-based special education laws
would promote social and

economic acceptance and enable disabled children to participate
in community life as
adults. As one of the congressional reports that accompanied
P.L. 94–142 in the United
States noted: ‘With proper educational services many of these
handicapped children
would be able to become productive citizens contributing to
society instead of being left
to remain burdens on society’ (United States Congress, 1976, p.
11).
Yet these outcomes did not follow. A series of national surveys
in the United States
found that disabled people were less well educated, less likely
to be employed and less
likely to participate in social activities than non-disabled groups
(Harris and Associates,
1986, 1987, 1989). Special education, it seemed, was not
preparing children identified
as having disabilities for life after school. Moreover, there were
difficulties with the
identification and classification of disabilities for educational
purposes (Dunn, 1968;
Mercer, 1973), and these created additional problems of access
and equity, generating
controversies that persist to this day (see, for example, Keogh &
MacMillan, 1996;
knowledge

MacMillan & [p. 9 ↓ ] Reschly, 1998;Ysseldyke, 2001; Florian
et al., 2006). Experience
in many other countries followed a similar pattern (CERI,
1994).
Sociologists of education (for example, Tomlinson, 1982) and
others (for example,
Skrtic, 1986, 1991) presented a critique of special education,
not as a fulfilment of the
right to education, but as a denial of that right by virtue of its
exclusionary practices.
Such analyses locate the problem of special education in the
structures of mainstream
education systems. Here the co-mingling of the right to
education as a human right and
the right to education as a mechanism of economic prosperity
become conflated and
confused. Legislation guaranteeing the right to education does
not exist in a vacuum
and rights-based legislation in and of itself has not proved
sufficient for achieving
access to education or preventing discrimination. Many children
and young people
continue to be marginalized within, or excluded from, education
systems around
the world, including those who live in countries with policy
frameworks that appear
supportive.
It has been argued that too much faith was placed in the law to
overcome the deeply
entrenched biases against and prejudices towards disabled

people as judicial systems
themselves are also influenced by problems of bias and
prejudice (Hahn, 2001). In
a provocative analysis, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum
(2004) suggests how this
dynamic operates. She asks why stigmatization is ubiquitous,
why all societies view
some people as normal and consider those who deviate
shameful. In a detailed review
of theoretical and empirical psychoanalytic work on shame and
stigma she arrives at the
following:
Human beings are deeply troubled about being human – about
being
highly intelligent and resourceful, on the one hand, but weak
and
vulnerable, helpless against death, on the other. We are
ashamed of
this awkward condition and, in manifold ways, we try to hide
from it.
In the process we develop and teach both shame at human
frailty and
disgust at the signs of our animality and mortality … In the case
of
disgust, properties pertinent to the subject's own fear of
animality and
mortality are projected onto a less powerful group, and that
group then
becomes a vehicle for the dominant group's anxiety about itself
… In
the case of shame, a more general anxiety about helplessness
and

knowledge
lack of control inspires the pursuit of invulnerability … An
appearance
of control is then frequently purchased by the creation of
stigmatized
groups. (pp. 336–7)
If such an insight is correct then it is little wonder that those
who believed that the law
could provide a complete remedy to the problem of
discrimination were disappointed.
What Nussbaum is arguing is that an understanding of the
dynamics of shame, disgust
and stigma and the ways they function in human social life
helps us to understand
why people with disabilities are marked as deviant or different
in all societies. After all,
what is ‘normal’ is generally decided by groups and it changes
from place to place and
over time. Nussbaum points out that the idea of normal is linked
to two very different
ideas: statistical frequency (usual and unusual) and a normative
conception of the
good (proper and improper, or appropriate and inappropriate).
She questions why this
connection should be drawn:

For, obviously enough, what is typical may or may not be very
good.
Bad backs, bad eyes and bad judgement are all very typical …
[while]
much progress in human affairs comes from people who are
unusual …
So why, in more or less all societies, has the notion of the
normal as the
usual also served as a normative function, setting up the
different for
stigmatizing treatment? (p. 218)
Her answer is that normal is a construction that permits us to
protect ourselves from
disruption, to hide from the imperfections about which we feel
the deepest shame in
ourselves. Little wonder then that special education is marked
out as a measure of the
failure of public responsibility. For no matter what educational
rights it protects or what
it achieves for individuals, it still permits others to hide from
the shame of imperfection
because it reinforces the notion of normal as usual and good. In
this analysis, special
education can never really be a good thing. So long as it
remains focused on difference
or what is unusual, normal can be defended as an appropriate
standard.
[p. 10 ↓ ] Interestingly, Nussbaum argues that it is essential that
an individual rights
approach serves as a first response to the problem of stigma.
She is in favour of laws
that protect individual rights such as the IDEA because she sees
their focus on human
rights as a strategy for challenging stigma. However such an

approach is not without
knowledge
its own difficulties for, as Minow (1990) observes, the laws and
policies that are created
to protect vulnerable groups also serve to marginalize them.
Thus we are caught in a
vicious cycle where efforts to grant or protect rights to equal
opportunity and treatment
also mark and stigmatize.
Indeed, the history of special education can be seen as the effort
to meet the dual
purpose of providing for all children while protecting ‘normals’
from ‘deviants’ (Lazerson,
1983). Special education thus embodies what Minow calls the
‘dilemma of difference’
as it occupies the space between the inclusionary and
exclusionary forces which
operate simultaneously at all times in service of society's dual
purpose of providing
and controlling civic life. Consider the work of teachers of
children who are designated
as having ‘special needs’. They aim to include children who
have been excluded from

what Booth and Ainscow (2002) call the culture, curriculum and
community of school,
but in so doing collude with an educational system that is
underpinned by complex and
subtle deterministic assumptions about difference, deviance and
ability that produced
the exclusion in the first instance.
Nearly half a century ago, Burton Blatt exposed the hazards
involved in doing this work.
Christmas in Purgatory (Blatt & Kaplan, 1966), Exodus from
Pandemonium (Blatt, 1970)
and Souls in Extremis (Blatt, 1973), highlighted the legally
sanctioned forms of abuse
that were part of ‘caring’ for disabled people in institutions. He
showed how those who
do the ‘care-giving’ as well as who are ‘cared for’ can also be
victims of unjust social
structures.
Teaching, it can be argued, is different from social care but the
practices of special
education have been subject to the same kind of critical analysis
(Tomlinson, 1982;
Skrtic, 1986, 1988, 1991; Brantlinger, 1997) provoking a heated
debate about whether
the effects of special education are beneficial or detrimental.
There is concern about
the nature and purpose of special education as well as what
might be considered an
appropriate response to disability and other difficulties. The
idea of special education
as a parallel or separate system of education to that which is
provided to the majority
of children has been challenged by notions of inclusion in
which all children are part

of one education system. The problem, of course, is that
inclusive education is not a
denial of individual difference, but an accommodation of it,
within the structures and
processes that are available to all learners. The process of
accommodating difference
knowledge
as a mechanism of equal opportunity, and as a fulfilment of the
right to education for all,
is not generally disputed by educationalists. But the means to
this end, whether through
‘special’ or ‘inclusive’ education, continues to be forcefully
debated.
‘Special’ or ‘Inclusive’ Education?
Fuchs and Fuchs (1992) have labelled those who undertake a
critical analysis of special
education as ‘abolitionists’ and those who do not as
‘conservationists’. They noted:
By the early 1980s [abolitionists] had developed a trenchant
critique
of the field, encompassing all aspects of service delivery. But

their
plans for rehauling special education tended toward extremism,
and
the accompanying rhetoric was often unremittingly negative, if
not
downright hostile and threatening. By the late 1980s,
conservationists
had fixed on their adversaries' unrealistic remedies and
intemperate
rhetoric to portray them as out-of-touch ideologues. To some
extent,
they succeeded. Simultaneously, and often inadvertently, they
discredited, or at least muffled, the truthful ring of the
abolitionist
critique. (p. 413)
As a result, it could be argued that the discourse of special
education was changed.
Now, one was either in favour of special education or against it.
To be in favour of
special education was to be against the ‘extremism’ [p. 11 ↓ ]
and the ‘intemperate
rhetoric’ of advocates for change. To support the reform of the
‘cascade of services
model’ of special education provision was to be against special
education itself.
Brantlinger (1997) called those in favour of special education
‘traditionalists’ and those
who advocated for systemic change (for example, models of
inclusive education to
replace the cascade of services model), ‘inclusionists’.
Traditionalists called those
who advocated for inclusive education ‘radicals’. More recently
the camps have been
described as ‘incremental reformers’ and ‘substantial
reconceptualists’ (Andrews et

al., 2000). There is the beginning of a recognition that a ‘with
us or against us’ type
of debate has polarized the field in ways that have made it
difficult to move practice
forward. In an attempt to find common ground in the widely
shared commitment of
knowledge
acting in children's best interests, a group of scholars
representing a range of divergent
perspectives has come to the following position:
We believe that special education can shape public opinion
about
disability in ways that help schools see all children as important
stakeholders, while promoting the development of methods that
enhance capacity for successful postschool adjustments among
individuals with disabilities … We believe that a division of
labour makes
sense, wherein the ncremental reformers focus on what to do on
behalf
of children, and the substantial reconceptualists focus on
achieving the
conditions necessary for promoting optimal methods. We
believe the

field needs to work simultaneously with the children and on the
system
(Andrews et al., 2000, p. 260).
While this is a refreshing departure from what had become a
very polarized debate,
there is a need to recognize that a call to work simultaneously
with the children and on
the system does not simply call a truce between those who hold
different perspectives,
but that new ways of conceptualizing the work are required.
The Problem of Difference Discourse
Sociological critiques (Tomlinson, 1982), legal analyses
(Minow, 1990) and
philosophical explorations of disability (Nussbaum, 2004) all
show how assumptions
about difference, deviance, ability and what is considered
normal, interact in ways
that produce, sustain and reproduce the dilemmas of access and
equity in education
that special education was intended to address. As one of the
mechanisms by which
schools accommodate diversity, special education, as currently
construed, reinforces
the exclusionary practices of general education, in part because
it relies on a ‘difference
discourse’ that essentially, though not entirely, agrees with the
mainstream view that
some children are qualitatively different from others and
therefore require something
different from that which is available to the majority.
Difference discourse is a term used by Ford (2005) to describe
what he calls a set of

interconnected beliefs conversations and practices that are
mutually reinforcing and
knowledge
socially pervasive. Though he uses the term in an analysis of
the concept of racial
culture he is careful to point out that the concept applies to
other social classifications
and identities. Many disabled activists and scholars argue for a
concept of disability
culture, a kind of identity politics that seeks to challenge
representations of disability as
deviant, grotesque or otherwise impoverished (for example,
Mitchell & Snyder, 2000).
This is important work that serves to uncover and expose the
deeply held belief that
disability is tragic because it is abnormal. Although this begs
any number of questions
about what is normal, it also unwittingly affirms the concept of
normalcy. Disability
studies scholars do not want to abandon difference discourse;
they seek to change it
in favour of a concept of disability culture that is vibrant,
beautiful and alive. But until
that day arrives, disabled people in general and children with

disabilities in particular
will rightly continue to require and demand protection from
discrimination within the
larger society and its institutions. What Ford cautions is an
awareness that difference
discourse itself is problematic and limited. It might alter, but
will not alone solve, the
problem of discrimination. So long as there is discrimination,
dilemmas of access and
equity remain.
[p. 12 ↓ ] Thus far, this analysis suggests two interdependent
problems facing the field
of special education. The first is the concept of normal as usual
and good, the second
is the dilemma of difference. Clearly there is a need for
understanding and challenging
the roles that notions of deviance, difference, disability and
special educational need
play in all aspects of social life, but particularly in education.
There is also a need to
confront the paradoxical nature of special education as it
currently operates within the
larger education system. Should it be acceptable that dilemmas
of difference are seen
as an inevitable feature of special education, a necessary evil
that must be endured for
the sake of providing special education? Or is it time to
reimagine the work of educating
children who experience difficulties in learning, not as a
Faustian pact whereby in
exchange for access the field is eternally condemned as a
measure of the failure of
public responsibility to children with disabilities and ‘special
needs’, but as an integral
part of a school's response when students experience

difficulties?
knowledge
Changing the difference discourse is necessary and urgent work
for the future of special
education (whatever name it calls itself). The task of
reimagining special education
suggests that current assumptions, systems and procedures
might be replaced by new
ways of thinking and working, and many of the contributors to
this book point in such
directions. In the remainder of this chapter three areas of
particular importance to the
task of reimagination are discussed: issues of definition (what is
special education?)
deterministic assumptions (what is ability?) and the practices
they have given rise to
(what is special about special education?).
Special Education, Special Needs
Education, or Something Else?
In 1997 the International Standard Classification of Education

replaced the term special
education with special needs education in order to differentiate
it from the earlier
international definitions of special education as that which took
place in special schools
or institutions (OECD, 2005). This change in terminology
distinguished the provision of
special education, meaning intervention, from placement in
special education schools
or classrooms. It is an important distinction because the concept
of place had long
been associated with provision, as placement in special schools
and classes was
often assumed necessary for provision. Special needs education,
meaning provision,
is defined as ‘educational intervention and support designed to
address special
educational needs’, wherever that intervention takes place.
The concept of special educational needs is broad, extending
beyond categories
of disability, to include all children who are in need of
additional support. However,
many countries still use categorical descriptions of disability
for the purpose of special
educational provision though the precise nature of the
categories varies. In the United
States, the Code of Federal Regulations defines special
education as ‘specially
designed instruction … to meet the unique needs of a child with
a disability’ (34 C.F.R. §

knowledge
300.14). Currently there are 13 categories of disability covered
by the American special
education legislation.
Identifying children as having special educational needs
(needing special treatment)
or needing special education (requiring additional resources)
has never been a
straightforward process within education. First, children rarely
fit categorical descriptions
of difficulty. Second, not all disabilities give rise to special
educational needs, nor
are all special educational needs a result of a disability. A child
with spina bifida may
or may not experience difficulties in learning. A child who
experiences difficulty with
literacy may or may not have dyslexia. Categorical descriptions
of difficulty may or may
not have educational relevance. It was for these reasons that
they were abolished in
England and Wales in 1981 as a result of the recommendations
of the Warnock Report
(DES, 1978).
[p. 13 ↓ ] Though a number of countries have tried to leave the
notion of discrete
categories behind, some process of classification remains in
place. England abandoned

the use of medical categories in favour of a classification of
‘special educational
need’ (SEN). Special education provision is that ‘which is
additional to, or otherwise
different from, the educational provision made generally for
children of their age in
schools maintained by the LEA, other than special schools, in
the area’ (Department
for Education and Employment, 1996, § 312). In Scotland, the
non-categorical nature
of special educational needs is also recognized. Recent
education legislation specifies
that ‘a child or young person has additional support needs
(ASN) where, for whatever
reason, the child or young person is, or is likely to be, unable
without the provision of
additional support to benefit from school education provided or
to be provided for the
child or young person’ (Scottish Parliament, 2004).
Whether the term special education, SEN provision or
additional support is used,
there is a common understanding that special needs education
involves something
‘different from’ or ‘additional to’ that which is generally
available in schools. When
students are classified as needing something different or
additional they become
categorically distinct from other children and are often
assumed, by virtue of needing
something different or additional, to be qualitatively different
as learners. This is the
central dilemma. To further complicate the picture there is
evidence that in countries
without a system of special needs education, little educational
provision is available

knowledge
to disabled children (see Peters, this volume). The shame and
stigma associated with
disability in many countries without a system of special needs
education often acts as a
barrier to the development of any kind of educational provision,
as children are hidden
at home or in institutions (UNICEF, 2005). The challenge is
how to make educational
provision available to all children without the shame of marking
some as different or
deviant.
Deterministic Assumptions about Ability,
Difference and Deviance
Since its inception, special education has been bound by
deterministic notions of
ability. The idea of one's ‘intelligence’ or ‘ability’ as a single
fixed entity that is normally
distributed throughout a population is so deeply entrenched and
pervasive in Western
human thought that it generally goes unquestioned even by
those who have studied this

controversial topic as part of their professional training. The
debates about intelligence
and IQ (whether it exists, in what form, how to measure it,
under what conditions
and when) are well known in education and psychology, and yet
it is a widely used
construct for sorting learners and in attempting to understand
the difficulties they
encounter in school. The belief in intelligence as something an
individual is born
with, though it may be stimulated or stunted, is foundational in
education despite
professional acknowledgement that it is a problematic concept.
As a result, there is a
deep professional ambivalence about the notion of intelligence
that reflects both the
discomfort and the usefulness in using the construct.
Gould (1996) attributes the belief in fixed ability to the
pervasive influence of biological
determinism, the recurrent view that we are primarily
determined by biological rather
than social or environmental factors. Though most
contemporary accounts of this
position claim that biological, environmental and social factors
are not isolated
from each other but interact in reciprocal ways that influence
each other and
produce individual differences, Gould asserts that these
complex insights have been
misunderstood:

knowledge
Errors of reductionism and biodeterminism take over in such
silly
statements as ‘Intelligence is 60 percent genetic and 40 percent
environmental.’ A 60 percent (or whatever) ‘heritability’ for
intelligence
means no such thing. We shall not get this issue straight until
we realize
that the ‘interactionism’ we all accept does not permit such
statements
as Trait x is 29 percent environmental and 71 percent genetic’
When
causative factors (more than two, by the way) interact so
complexly,
and throughout growth, to produce an intricate adult [p. 14 ↓ ]
being,
we cannot, in principle, parse that being's behaviour in to
quantitative
percentages of remote root causes. The adult being is an
emergent
entity who must be understood at his own level and in his own
totality.
The truly salient issues are malleabity and flexibility, not
fallacious
parsing by percentages. A trait may be 90 percent heritable, yet
entirely
malleable. A twenty-dollar pair of eyeglasses from the local
pharmacy
may fully correct a defect of vision that is 100 percent

heritable. (p. 34)
The Mismeasure of Man, Gould's 1981 masterpiece (revised in
1996), presents a
critique of biodeterminsm not as a rejection of science but using
the tools of science and
philosophy to reveal the fallacious reasoning that underlie the
theory of a unitary, innate,
linearly rankable IQ. His analysis of the history of mental
testing and measurement
shows that the notion of fixed intelligence is based on some
fundamental errors of
science, notably reductionism, dichotomization, hierarchy and
reification. As Gould
explains it, the drive to understand intelligence resulted in the
parsing of complex
phenomena by subdividing and ranking it into grades of
intelligence, for example,
normal or retarded, average or above average, smart or stupid,
and so on. This in turn
led to the reification of intelligence as an entity rather than an
abstract concept. Gould's
central argument does not reject a concept of intelligence or
deny individual differences
but points out that, contrary to popular belief, intelligence,
expressed as IQ, has not
been verified as a single entity let alone one that can be
expressed numerically. He
disagrees with IQ as an expression of the concept of
intelligence
because the two most contradictory hypotheses are both fully
consistent
with it: 1) that it reflects an inherited level of mental acuity
(some people
do well on most tests because they are born smarter); or 2) that

it
records environmental advantages and deficits (some people do
well on
knowledge
most tests because they are well schooled, grew up with enough
to eat,
books in the home, and loving parents. (p. 282)
It is important to remember that there are many definitions of
intelligence and a number
of views about its development, measurement and assessment.
Though scholarly
reviews of the concept remind us that intelligence is an attribute
that reflects what a
person has learned (for example, Sattler, 2001), the popularity
of IQ as a meaningful
expression of a person's ability persists. Many educational
practices are based on a
tacit assumption of fixed ability and the belief that it is
normally distributed within the
population. Moreover, in many parts of the world, identification
of disabilities and/or
special educational needs depends, at least in part, on some
form of ability test scores,

and again this tends to reinforce the notion that groups of
learners can be sorted into
students with and without special educational needs, who
become those in special and
those in mainstream or general education.
Hart (1998) has argued that much educational practice,
including special education
policy, standards-based reforms and classroom practice serves
to reaffirm the
legitimacy of the notion of fixed ability. Schools use ‘cognitive
abilities tests’ to group
pupils and target additional support, but this serves to confirm
judgements about ability
rather than raise questions about intervention. In commenting
on the resilience of
the concept of fixed ability, she cites Brown and McIntyre
(1993), and Cooper and
McIntyre's (1996) suggestion that the concept of fixed ability
serves a practical purpose
in that it enables teachers to reduce vast amounts ‘of
information about their pupils
to a manageable form that can inform and guide their teaching’
(p. 161). But is there
another way to serve such a purpose? Hart and her colleagues
(this volume) suggest
what might replace the notion of fixed, differential ability in
practice. Their notion of
transformability offers an alternative way of thinking about the
difficulties children
experience in learning.

knowledge
Reimagining Special Education beyond
Special Needs Education
Many of those who have attempted to articulate what is
‘special’ about special
education begin with a defence of teaching practices that have
been shown to work
with students identified as having disabilities. However, [p. 15
↓ ] contrary to definitions
of special education as something ‘different from’ or ‘additional
to’ that which is
available to other pupils, the strategies they identify also work
with students who are not
identified as having special educational needs. There is a
similar situation in the field of
psychopharmacology where the drugs used to treat presumed
neurological disorders
such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder also improve the
functioning of those who
are not so identified (Farah et al., 2004). Tenner (2005)
describes hypermotivational
syndrome, a condition where students who have not experienced
difficulty in learning
use prescription drugs to attain a competitive advantage by
chemically enhancing their
performance. As they note, this begs a number of questions
about who should have
access to drugs that enhance neurocognitive enhancement, when

and why. It also
suggests that those whose neurocognitve functioning is
considered to be impaired or
deficient may not be qualitatively different physiologically to
those who are considered
to have normal functioning. The same can be said about
teaching strategies. If
strategies work with children who experience difficulty in
learning and they work with
other children, then who should have access to them and under
what conditions should
this access be available?
Critics of special education have questioned the terms and
conditions of this access
and they have questioned the high price that is paid by the
unintended consequences
of a dual system of special and regular education. To argue that
sound teaching
practices have been developed by special educators does not
refute the criticisms that
are levelled at the field. Placement in special education does
have unintended side
effects. It can and often does stigmatize those who are singled
out for the ‘extra help’.
Thus, to justify placement in special education on the grounds
that it is better than the
alternatives is to close off the possibility of thinking differently
about alternative ways of
working.

knowledge
It is the process of providing something ‘additional to’ or
‘different from’ that which is
‘otherwise available’ in school that defines special education
provision. The task is not
to defend what is ‘special’ about this kind of provision but to
challenge complacency
about what is not ‘otherwise available’. Reimagining special
education involves rejecting
the questionable construct of normal as biologically determined,
usual and good in
favour of a more nuanced understanding of difference. As
Minow (1990) reminds
us, it is not difference, but the difference we make of it, that
matters. Responding to
individual difference is important but how this is done is
equally important. Much has
been learned about the processes of education. Our
understanding of the relationship
between teachers, learners, schools as communities and their
relationship to society
has deepened, creating an opportunity to think differently about
the nature of special
needs education, what it is called and how it is provided.
Palinscar (1997) suggested
that the sheer number of students served by special education
programmes in the US
– approximately 11.5 per cent of all school aged students –
renders it a part of general
education rather than one branch of a dual system of ‘general’

and ‘special’ education
as it has been seen historically. The problem is that the history
of a dual system has
become part of the field's view of itself rather than a history of
the struggle to achieve
education for all.
The impact of this version of history can be clearly seen in the
attempts to articulate
what is special about special education. In examining the
research evidence, Cook
and Schirmer (2003) found that there was ‘substantial and
compelling evidence of
effective practices developed by special educators for students
with disabilities’ though
the ‘techniques that are effective for students with disabilities
are generally effective
for all students’ (p. 202). They went on to conclude that ‘there
is little inherent, [then]
in the content of the particular effective practices that make
special education special’.
What is unique is what Vaughn and Linan-Thompson (2003)
called ‘the delivery of
instruction’. In their review of notions of specialist pedagogy,
Lewis and Norwich (2005)
came to a similar conclusion and suggested that rather than
thinking of particular [p.
16 ↓ ] teaching strategies as differentially effective, they might
be arranged along a
continuum from high to low intensity. Here again the emphasis
is on application rather
than technique. If it is true that practices that are effective for
students with disabilities
are effective for all students, then it cannot be concluded, as it
often is, that mainstream
classroom teachers do not recognize or know to implement

effective teaching practices
knowledge
for pupils with special needs. A cursory look at the content of
many teacher education
and educational psychology textbooks will recommend virtually
the same teaching
practices to those identified as empirically validated procedures
in special education.
Arguing that the notion of a distinct special pedagogy is
unhelpful, Davis and Florian
(2004) pointed out that sound practices in teaching and learning
in both mainstream
and special education literatures are often informed by the same
basic research,
and that certain teaching strategies developed for one purpose
could be effectively
applied to other groups of children with different patterns of
educational need. In fact,
attempts to define what is special about special education
generally acknowledge
that effective practices in special education often originate in
general education (for
example, Kavale, this volume). Cook and Schirmer (2003) list

direct instruction, self-
monitoring, mnemonic instruction, strategy training,
curriculum-based measurement,
applied behaviour analysis and functional assessment as
effective special education
techniques. However, these are all well-known mainstream
educational practices
discussed in many mainstream educational psychology and
teacher education texts
(see, for example, Lefrancois, 2000; Pollard, 2002; Whitebread,
2000) though, as Cook
and Schirmer point out, little is known about their uptake in
special or general education
classes.
This is not to say that all learners are the same or that there is
no need to differentiate
or otherwise be concerned with the delivery of instruction. On
the contrary, it is the
interest in how learners differ and the ways in which they can
be helped to overcome
the difficulties they experience in learning that is what drives
much research in special
education. But when the work is done in collusion with the
exclusionary force that
dichotomizes learners on the basis of ‘ability’ it cannot help us
to resolve the dilemma of
difference. Nor can it help with improving what is generally
available in schools.
Conclusion
Seymour Sarason, in his foreword to Blatt's (1973) Souls in
Extremis, noted that in
between values and actions are our knowledge theories and
conceptions. He suggested

that ‘the road to hell is not only paved with good intentions, it
is often coated with a thick
layer of what is thought to be the best thinking’. It is important
therefore to reconsider
knowledge
what is thought to be best thinking, not because it is necessarily
wrong, but because
what may have seemed logical, just or right, no longer serves
these aims, or when the
cost of unintended consequences becomes too high. In this
chapter, I have argued that
the paradox of unintended consequences, of perpetuating
exclusionary practices in the
name of equity, that has defined the nature of special education
to date, need not do
so in the future. To move forward, however, will require some
new thinking and a fuller
level of engagement with the complex processes of education in
general, than scholars
have undertaken to date. Three areas of work deserve particular
attention.
The right to education. Many educators accept the right to
education as a human

right and align themselves with the Deweyan idea of education
for democracy.
However, the right to education is situated within the purposes
of education. In recent
times the concept of democracy and the principles of a market
economy have been
combined, resulting in an emphasis in education on high
standards and competition
(see, for example, Rouse and McLaughlin, this volume). The
curriculum is driven
by international competition [p. 17 ↓ ] that places a premium on
the skills thought to
produce economic advantage. In such a situation there are
winners and losers. As
Nussbaum's examination of the role of shame in social life
suggests (Nussbaum, 2004),
those who lose in the educational marketplace are stigmatized
by being considered to
have ‘special educational needs’. Nussbaum argues that:
modern liberal societies can make an adequate response to the
phenomena of shame only if they shift away from a very
common
intuitive idea of the normal citizen that has been bequeathed to
us by
the social-contract tradition so influential in the history of
European
thought: the image of the citizen as productive worker, able to
pay for
the benefits he receives by the contributions he makes. (pp.
176–7)
Reimagining special education requires differentiating
education as a human right
from education as a means of achieving human rights, for
example, economic and

development rights. Such differentiation shows how
designations of special educational
need or placement in special education can be unjust, a barrier
to, rather than a
fulfilment of, human rights. But as Nussbaum's analysis points
out, deeply rooted
feelings of shame about human frailty make it difficult to
change accounts of difference.
knowledge
In her 2002 Tanner Lecture on Human Values, Nussbaum (2006)
suggests that the idea
of the normal citizen bequeathed by the social-contract tradition
itself is fundamentally
flawed because it is underpinned by a notion of reciprocity that
assumes some level
of equality among those who enter into it. She argues that
theories of justice based
on the social contract treat those with severe disabilities and
long-term care needs
as an afterthought rather than as full citizens. So, although
rights-based policies are
essential in combating stigma, they cannot be adequate if our
theories of justice do not
take account of human difference. Failure to take difference

into account perpetuates
the cycle of marginalizing and protecting vulnerable groups.
However, accounting for
difference as part of the human condition renders obsolete the
notion of normal as the
appropriate educational standard.
Challenging deterministic beliefs. In addition, deeper
consideration needs to be given
to the power of the beliefs that teachers hold about human
ability, teaching, learning
and specialist knowledge. Rethinking the concept of normalcy
requires a consideration
of how it is conveyed in teacher education and reinforced when
working with pupils
in schools. This is essential. It may not be possible to win the
battle to change the
structure of schools, as so-called ‘radical reformers’ advocate,
but efforts to challenge
and confront biological determinism in all it various guises
must continue. As Skrtic
(1991) reminds us, though professional work is inextricably
bound by the organizational
context in which it is performed, professions set their own
standards. While it may not
be possible to change the organizational context of schools, the
field can determine the
standards by which it aspires be held to account. To adopt an
anti-determinist stance as
a professional standard sets a new agenda for research and
practice that requires, as I
have tried to argue, a reimagining of what special education is
and can become.
Researching teaching practice. Many who have attempted to
articulate what is special

about special education cite the lack of evidence that classroom
teachers use ‘validated’
strategies when ‘including’ pupils with special educational
needs (for example, Cook
& Schirmer, 2003). Based on the logic of the evidence-based
practice movement in
medicine, the demand for more ‘scientific’ educational research
is seen as the way to
improve both practice and outcomes (Howe, 2005). Yet the
scientific research base
in education has been ‘stubbornly indeterminate’ (Huberman,
1993, p. 26) limiting its
usefulness to improve practice. Studies of how teachers do their
work (for example,
Brown & McIntyre, 1993; Little & McLaughlin, 1993) suggest
that its complexity and
knowledge
demands have not been fully appreciated or captured by many
experimental or quasi-
experimental research designs. As Huberman (1992) notes:
[p. 18 ↓ ] Essentially teachers are artisans working primarily
alone,
with a variety of new and cobbled together materials in a

personally
designed work environment. They gradually develop a
repertoire of
nstructional skills and strategies … through a somewhat
haphazard
process of trial and error, usually when one or other segment of
the
repertoire does not work repeatedly … Teachers spontaneously
go
about tinkering with their classrooms. (p. 136)
Though some would say that such a seemingly haphazard
process is insufficient and
inadequate for teaching pupils who experience difficulties in
learning, it has been shown
that teachers who are adept at embedding responsiveness to
individual need within
the process of whole-class teaching are able to sustain inclusive
practice (Jordan
& Stanovich, 1998). In other words, it is when teachers persist
in tinkering that they
expand their repertoire of responses to the difficulties students
encounter in learning.
Perhaps it is a mistake to deride teachers' practice as
unsystematic and lacking in
rigour (Hammersley, 2001). McIntyre (2005) has argued that the
kind of knowledge
that is produced by research is different from that which
classroom teachers need.
He outlines a series of steps for bridging the gap between
research and practice that
calls on teachers to articulate fully their craft knowledge and
researchers to understand
better the indirect influence of the knowledge they generate.
The question is not why
teachers do not make better use of research but how to develop

research strategies
that more fully capture the complexity of classroom practice
when teaching diverse
groups of learners. Such strategies can help to generate new
understandings about
how to respond when pupils experience difficulty that do not
continue to depend on
designations of special educational need.
These three things, clearer thinking about the fulfilment of the
right to education, the
challenge to deterministic beliefs about ability, and a shift in
focus from differences
among learners, to learning for all, set an agenda for special
needs education that can
change the nature of what special education is and might
become in the future. In time it
may also help change the organization of educational provision
and prevailing concepts
of schooling so that the reimagining of special education
becomes a reimagining
knowledge
diversity in education. Then research on the difficulties students
experience in learning

might lead to pedagogical practices that are inclusive of all
learners.
LaniFlorian
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knowledge
Exceptional Children
2015, Vol. 82(1) 25 –43
© 2015 The Author(s)
DOI: 10.1177/0014402915598782

ec.sagepub.com
Special Features Article
As part of Exceptional Children’s series of
Special Feature articles, we were asked to con-
sider the future of personnel preparation and
special education. This is a tall order given that
personnel preparation encompasses a wide
breadth and depth of topics. Thus, we focused
our work around one overarching question we
believe is essential to consider as we look to the
future of special education personnel prepara-
tion: What frameworks might teacher educa-
tors draw from to promote special education
teacher effective performance? In answering
this question, we first summarize current trends
in the context of schooling and special educa-
tion (i.e., the Common Core State Standards
[CCSS], multitiered systems of support
[MTSS]) and what these contexts demand of
special education teachers (SETs). As part of
this discussion we present a case for why the
time is right to shift attention to issues of qual-
ity in special education personnel preparation.
Next, we present a model for fostering effec-
tive SET performance grounded in literature on
the science of learning and present approaches
and strategies in teacher education that support
what we have learned from this literature. We
conclude with implications for how special
education personnel preparation might be refo-
cused, particularly given current constraints on
schools and colleges of education, to better
promote this model for fostering effective per-

formance.
What the Current Context
Demands of SETs
Today, more than any time in history, SETs
are expected to play a role in developing and
supporting rigorous content instruction for
598782ECXXXX10.1177/0014402915598782Exceptional
ChildrenLeko et al.
research-article2015
1The University of Kansas
2The University of Florida
3Queens College, City University of New York
Corresponding Author:
Melinda M. Leko, Department of Special Education,
University of Kansas, 1122 West Campus Rd. Lawrence,
KS 66045.
E-mail: [email protected]
Envisioning the Future of Special
Education Personnel Preparation
in a Standards-Based Era
Melinda M. Leko1, Mary T. Brownell2,
Paul T. Sindelar2, and Mary Theresa Kiely3
Abstract
The authors consider the future of special education personnel
preparation by responding to
an overarching question: What frameworks might teacher
educators use as a basis to promote
special education teacher effective performance now and in the
future? In answering this question,

they summarize current trends in the context of schooling and
special education (i.e., Common
Core State Standards [CCSS], multi-tiered systems of support
[MTSS]) and what these contexts
demand of special education teachers. The authors propose a
practice-based model for
fostering effective special education teacher performance.
Grounded in the science of learning,
the model includes approaches in teacher education that align
with this literature. Implications
for implementing the model are provided, which recognize
current constraints on schools and
colleges of education, to better promote this model for fostering
effective performance.
mailto:[email protected]
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1177%2F00144029
15598782&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2015-09-17
26 Exceptional Children 82(1)
students with disabilities that is technology-
rich. Pressure for students with disabilities
and their teachers to meet high standards is
evident in a national movement that all stu-
dents graduate “college and career ready” by,
among other things, successfully meeting a
rigorous core of content standards for various
subject areas (Haager & Vaughn, 2013a).
Many states have adopted the CCSS (National
Governors Association Center for Best Prac-
tices, Council of Chief State School Officers,
2010). The CCSS support clear outcomes
teachers are expected to teach to ensure stu-
dents, including those with disabilities, can

compete successfully in a global economy
(Common Core State Standards Initiative,
n.d.). The CCSS provide little guidance to
ensure students with disabilities are success-
ful in meeting the demands of a more chal-
lenging curriculum, leaving general education
teachers and SETs with the task of determin-
ing how to provide students with disabilities
appropriate instruction that achieves these
high goals (Haager & Vaughn, 2013a), includ-
ing instruction in areas in which teachers may
need considerable professional development
(PD), such as writing (Graham & Harris,
2013).
At the same time states are adopting more
rigorous content standards, they are simulta-
neously implementing MTSS for preventing
academic and behavioral difficulties through
high quality, research-based core instruction
provided to all students and increasingly
intensive, personalized tiers of intervention
that incorporate evidence-based interventions
when students are unable to respond success-
fully (Chard & Linan-Thompson, 2008).
Although models of MTSS vary, most make
use of a minimum of three tiers of instruction
and support, with general education teachers
holding the majority of responsibility for core
instruction at Tier 1 and SETs delivering
intensive, personalized instruction at Tier 3
(Fuchs, Fuchs, & Compton, 2012).
To succeed in school contexts driven by
MTSS and the CCSS, SETs need to have
extensive knowledge of how to support stu-

dents with disabilities in achieving rigorous
content standards. Although it could be argued
this requisite knowledge has characterized the
work of special educators for quite some time,
today’s context ups the ante, requiring SETs
to be extremely proficient in the content,
interventions, assessments, and technology to
support students’ learning needs (Lignugaris-
Kraft, Sindelar, McCray, & Kimerling, 2014).
Rhetoric from Our Responsibility, Our Prom-
ise (Council of Chief State School Officers,
2012) underscores the greater demands placed
on teachers: “higher expectations for students
have led to higher expectations for teaching
and leading” (p. 27).
Special education teachers will need well-
developed collaboration skills to communi-
cate and work with various service providers
in the ways required to design cohesive and
precise instruction. This collaboration will
need a much tighter focus compared to past
models wherein SETs provided consultative
services to general educators or recommended
accommodations that would allow students
with disabilities to access the general educa-
tion curriculum (Brownell, Sindelar, Kiely, &
Danielson, 2010). In current contexts, collab-
oration will center on (a) collecting and inter-
preting initial and ongoing assessment data,
(b) planning precise classroom and interven-
tion instruction that is carefully coordinated
and targets the key CCSS content and skills
students with disabilities need to master
(c) measuring students’ response to classroom

or intervention instruction, and (d) making
changes to instructional plans based on the
assessment data. All of this will have to be
coordinated across multiple tiers, further
necessitating SETs be skilled collaborators
and data-literate (Council of Chief State
School Officers, 2012).
SETs will also need more extensive cur-
ricular knowledge, particularly (a) the general
education curriculum and the literacy and
numeracy demands the curriculum places on
students and (b) literacy and mathematics
strategies for intervening in student learning
(Graham & Harris, 2013; Haager & Vaughn,
2013b; Powell, Fuchs, & Fuchs, 2013).
Closely tied to this curricular knowledge is the
need for more extensive knowledge of technolo-
gies that can make curriculum accessible to
Leko et al. 27
students with disabilities and support their
learning, as well as knowledge of how learn-
ing plays out in increasingly technology-rich
modern learning environments (Smith &
Kennedy, 2014). The bottom line is SETs will
have to be more knowledgeable, skilled, and
responsive given the more challenging cur-
riculum demands placed on students and the
high stakes accountability systems in place to
assess students’ achievement.
Quality Special Education Personnel

Preparation
The current schooling contexts we have
described, as well as more than 2 decades of
criticism being waged against teacher prepara-
tion housed in higher education (e.g., Hess,
2001; Walsh, 2001), has placed increased pres-
sure on colleges of education to demonstrate
they are capable of producing teachers who are
able to provide more rigorous, effective content
instruction. Political pundits assert traditional
teacher preparation has been ineffective in pre-
paring preservice teachers to be able to secure
adequate student achievement gains. Such
vocal opposition to formal teacher preparation
has spurred a heated debate between deregula-
tionists and formalists regarding how to reform
teacher preparation (McLeskey & Ross, 2004).
As we look to the future of special education
personnel preparation, we envision this debate
lasting for quite some time and without a pre-
dictable outcome. As formalists who champion
the stance that improved SET quality will result
from improved personnel preparation, we
believe it is critical that the field makes strides
in garnering public support for this position.
Two ways to do this are (a) to redesign person-
nel programs so they are better aligned with
what is known from research on the science of
learning and (b) bolster the research base
undergirding SETs’ work.
To develop the knowledge and skills nec-
essary to meet the heightened rigor and
accountability of current schooling contexts,
both preparation and policy reform will be

required. Historic supply and demand issues
in special education have resulted in broad
certification and licensure patterns and
multiple pathways into the classroom
(Brownell et al., 2010; Geiger et al., 2014).
In most states, SETs are licensed to teach in
PK–12 settings and respond to a variety of
student needs (Geiger et al., 2014). These
broad licensing patterns have resulted in
preparation programs that are designed to
prepare SETs to provide instruction to stu-
dents across multiple content areas and
grade levels, co-teach with general educa-
tion teachers, and collaborate with parents.
In addition, shortages have encouraged a
variety of approaches to preparation, includ-
ing brief coursework preservice teachers
complete after they secure a bachelor’s
degree, 2 to 4 years of preparation in more
traditional undergraduate programs, and res-
idency programs in which special educators
take positions in public schools while they
are completing teacher preparation course-
work (Boe, 2014; Rosenberg, Boyer,
Sindelar, & Misra, 2007). Such heterogene-
ity across programs and lack of focus within
programs are not likely to provide beginning
SETs with the practice-based opportunities
they need to learn to teach more effectively.
The time to address this challenge is now.
For the first time in the field’s history,
pressure to keep pace with unabated SET
demand has decreased. The number of SETs
employed in U.S. public schools recently

has declined (Boe, 2014). Between 2005 and
2009, the number of SETs employed in U.S.
public schools fell to 389,904 (IDEA Data
Center, n.d.), a drop of 8.8%. SET demand
decreased in 30 states, and in 12 states, the
decline exceeded 10%. The decrease in total
demand for SETs was associated with a con-
current 3.9% decline in the number of stu-
dents with disabilities, most of whom have
learning disabilities. For once, it may be
possible to focus attention on issues of qual-
ity over quantity in special education per-
sonnel preparation. Yet what would a teacher
education program that focused more atten-
tion on issues of quality look like? What
research on effective learning and teacher
education might support the design of pro-
grams that help special educators acquire the
knowledge and skills to work within MTSS
and help students with disabilities achieve
CCSS goals?
A Practice-Based Framework for
Fostering Effective Teaching
If MTSS is to be implemented as a mecha-
nism for helping students with disabilities
achieve CCSS, then special education person-
nel preparation must be able to produce teach-
ers who can work successfully in such a
context. It will be difficult to do this if three

fundamental aspects of teacher preparation
remain the same. First, teacher preparation
programs cannot continue to prepare SETs
broadly and hope they will develop the depth
of knowledge and skill fluency needed to
teach rigorous content within an MTSS frame-
work. Second, to develop competence, teacher
education programs must incorporate ways of
preparing SETs that help them to practice
using these essential knowledge and skills;
practice opportunities should be grounded in
research and include collaboration practice
with general education teachers. Third, gen-
eral education teacher preparation will need to
change in rather substantial ways to ensure
preservice teachers have the skills and abili-
ties to work within an MTSS framework, an
important point that requires discussion
beyond the scope of this article.
In accordance with Grossman and McDonald
(2008), we propose special education teacher
preparation return to a competency-based
approach, popular in the 1970s and 1980s, with a
few new twists. Special education (and general
education) preparation should consider moving
away from teaching about practice to construct-
ing more opportunities for candidates to practice
teaching in structured, carefully sequenced, and
closely monitored practical experiences, ones in
which special education teacher candidates prac-
tice the knowledge and skills they will need to
collaborate around and implement tiered instruc-
tion. Although this idea may not seem novel, it is
not the status quo for teacher education (both in
general and special education) for a number of

reasons within and outside teacher educators’
control (Grossman, Hammerness, & McDonald,
2009; Grossman & McDonald, 2008).
For once, it may be possible to
focus our attention on issues of
quality over quantity in special education
personnel preparation. Yet what
would a teacher education program
that focused more attention on issues
of quality look like?
In a study of preparation experiences
across various helping professions, Grossman
et al. (2005) found teacher education provides
fewer opportunities for novices to practice
elements of teaching and receive immediate
feedback compared to other professions
(Grossman et al., 2005). According to Gross-
man and McDonald (2008),
while the field of teacher education has developed
a number of pedagogical approaches that enable
novices to study the complexity of teaching
practice in some detail . . . university-based
teacher educators leave the development of
pedagogical skill in the interactive aspects of
teaching almost entirely to field experiences, the
component of professional education over which
we have the least control. (p. 189)
Further, Grossman and McDonald argued it
will be important for programs to reconsider

how they can begin to structure such practice
without depending entirely on PK–12 cooper-
ating teachers who supervise preservice teach-
ers during field experiences.
Although there are examples of SET prepa-
ration programs that have made concerted
efforts to structure experiences with an eye
toward providing candidates with appropri-
ately sequenced, scaffolded, and structured
practice-based opportunities (e.g., Ross &
Lignugaris-Kraft, in press), it would be diffi-
cult to argue convincingly that this is common
practice. As such, we present a framework,
based on what is known about expertise and
what promotes its development, that could
guide the design of special education personnel
preparation to be more practice-based. Funda-
mental to a practice-based approach, however,
is clarity about what special education preser-
vice teachers will.
Leko et al. 29
Focus on High-Leverage Practice
and High-Leverage Content
In experts, conceptual knowledge and skills
along with situational knowledge (or under-
standing of when to apply particular knowl-
edge and skills) are well integrated, organized,
and easily accessible (Bransford, Brown, &
Cocking, 1999). Experts have “the knowledge
and skills readily available from memory that

are needed to make sense of future problems
and opportunities” (Brown, Roediger, &
McDaniel, 2014, p. 2), and such well-
integrated knowledge is acquired through
practicing in increasingly complex settings
over time. Limited research on highly effec-
tive teachers in general and special education
suggests these findings about experts can be
applied to teachers (see Brownell et al., 2014,
for a review).
Two years of preparation, however, is
insufficient to prepare SETs or any profes-
sional to be an expert (Ericsson, 2014).
Teacher preparation programs need some way
of focusing on the essential content and
instructional practice of effective special edu-
cation teaching. Researchers in general educa-
tion have argued there are foundational skills
of teaching that cut across subjects, contexts,
and grade levels (e.g., leading a discussion,
assessing student work, and planning instruc-
tion), as well as essential skills and knowl-
edge that are particular to specific subjects or
contexts (Ball & Forzani, 2009; Grossman &
McDonald, 2008). Such practices have been
referred to as high-leverage practices and
high-leverage content.
The concept of high-leverage practices is
likely familiar to special education teacher
educators, as a competency-based approach to
personnel preparation was common in the
1970s and 1980s (Brownell et al., 2010; Chris-
toplos & Valletutti, 1972). Thus, it is easy to
argue from research that explicit instruction,

engaging guided practice, corrective feedback,
and collecting and interpreting progress-moni-
toring data might be considered core compe-
tencies or high-leverage practices in special
education (Heward, 2003; Swanson & Sachse-
Lee, 2000).
Once high-leverage practices are identified
they can be modeled and practiced across dif-
ferent content areas using content-specific
strategies (e.g., using explicit instruction in
reading to teach a summarization strategy) so
teacher educators can demonstrate how the
practice changes depending on the structure
of the content being taught, which brings us to
an important point. The integration of what
SETs know about the content and how to use
high-leverage practices and content-specific
pedagogies to enact it is essential to develop-
ing well-integrated knowledge and practice.
Special education preservice teachers, how-
ever, often only have a year or two to develop
essential content knowledge. Thus, it will be
equally important for teacher educators to
decide on the critical content (e.g., whole
number operations, knowledge of fractions)
and content-specific strategies (e.g., schema
activation strategies) they want to target—the
high leverage content. This high leverage con-
tent could be the key knowledge beginning
SETs will need to deploy when providing
reading and math intervention instruction in
MTSS.
As preservice SETs learn how to teach,
they will also need to learn how to coordinate

their efforts with general education to provide
effective MTSS that help students with dis-
abilities achieve the CCSS. Although there is
less research supporting collaborative teach-
ing practice, key collaborative skills, such as
collective planning, active listening, and
negotiation, must be taught because there is a
legal foundation in special education for col-
laboration with professionals and parents
(Turnbull, Erwin, Soodak, & Shogren, 2011)
and because effective collaboration makes
enactment of coherent evidence-based tiered
instruction possible (Brownell et al., 2010).
We realize the idea of high-leverage prac-
tices in special education personnel prepara-
tion may feel like a “back to the future”
approach and something faculty are already
teaching to their SET candidates; however,
identification of high leverage content, and
the use of carefully crafted, sequenced
evidence-based opportunities to practice learn-
ing how to teach high-leverage practices and
high leverage content rather than about them
is likely less common. Yet such an approach
will be one important way of readying a com-
petency-based approach to learning to teach
special education.
Using the Science on Learning to
Support a Practice-Based Approach

Ideally, movement toward a more practice-
based approach to SET preparation would be
grounded in research on effective teachers and
effective teacher education. However, there is
insufficient research in general and special
education preparation to constitute such a
foundation (Lignugaris-Kraft et al., 2014).
Thus, we draw on what is known about the
science of learning and how effective perfor-
mance develops and combine those research
findings with what is known about effective
teacher education pedagogy to support a prac-
tice-based approach to special education
teacher preparation.
Several decades of research in psychol-
ogy, sports, neuroscience, and medicine have
revealed some guiding principles and strate-
gies for improving learning that can be
applied to teacher education (and in some
cases have already been applied) and which
can go a long ways toward improving teach-
ers’ learning (Ericsson, 2014). Carefully
sequenced and calibrated practice, also
referred to as deliberate practice, that builds
on one’s current level of knowledge and skill
in conjunction with expert feedback on per-
formance seems to be foundational to the
development of effective performance over
time. Drawing on Ericsson (2014), we refer
to this as deliberate practice with perfor-
mance feedback. Deliberate practice with
feedback has been documented in other per-
formance-based professions, such as surgery,
as critical to developing expert performance.

It is common knowledge that if you require
delicate surgery, you should seek the surgeon
who has performed the procedure most often,
and there are important reasons for why this
is the case. Deliberate practice with feedback
in authentic settings allows surgeons to
develop routines they can implement fluently
and a schema for interpreting and evaluating
the surgical process as it unfolds.
For deliberate practice to be effective with
teachers, it must be carefully designed to
increase in complexity over time while decreas-
ing in level of support (Berliner, 2001). The pro-
cess of gradually increasing independence of
performance has been referred to as scaffolding
(Gibbons, 2002; Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976).
Scaffolding allows skilled instructors or coaches
to prevent cognitive overload. Gradually
increasing the level of complexity of knowledge
and tasks over time while demanding increas-
ingly independent performance provides oppor-
tunities for teachers to achieve deep levels of
knowledge integration without being over-
whelmed by the complexity of real teaching
environments (Grossman et al., 2009).
Many of the principles and strategies we
introduce will be recognizable, as decades of
empirical support across disciplines support
them. Our argument, however, is not that
these principles are sound or new, but rather
they should be anchors for special education
teacher preparation in ways that are systemic
and far-reaching. Moreover, it is important to

recognize these principles and strategies help
teacher educators make decisions about how
to structure and sequence practice-based
approaches when they do not have a substan-
tive research base in teacher education to
draw on for making such decisions.
Interleaved and distributed practice. Inter-
leaved practice requires learners to discern
among different concepts within the same
practice session (Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh,
Nathan, & Willingham, 2013; Taylor &
Rohrer, 2010). For example, when teach-
ing students how to solve mathematics word
problems, it is more beneficial to have them
practice several types of word problems at one
time (e.g., subtraction that results from com-
paring, part-part-whole, or change problems)
as opposed to practicing only one type of
problem at a time (e.g., just change problems).
Interleaved practice requires learners to
develop the conceptual knowledge to discern
differences between problems and then decide
what knowledge and skills are necessary to
Leko et al. 31
solve them accurately (Roediger, 2014). When
learners are able to better discern the underly-
ing structure of problems, they are more able
to easily recognize those problems when they
occur again and use their knowledge to solve
them (Brown et al., 2014).

Distributed practice (Willingham, 2014)
means spreading learning out over time. If
given 8 hours to study for a test, the principle
of distributed practice suggests learning will
last longer if study sessions are broken into
two 4-hour blocks of study instead of one
block of 8 hours. Distributed practice requires
learners to tap into their memories to retrieve
knowledge about different problems and such
opportunities to rehearse existing knowledge
leads to deeper, long-term learning (Rohrer,
2009; Willingham, 2014).
Situated in content and authentic contexts.
Research comparing experts to novices in
most professional domains, including teaching,
shows experts’ knowledge is highly contextu-
alized (Farrington-Darby & Wilson, 2006) and
dependent on experiences they have acquired
over time (Fadde, 2007). Experts’ conceptual
knowledge in a particular domain is well inte-
grated with their experiences. For instance,
medical doctors’ knowledge of symptoms
associated with disease is combined with their
experiences treating patients manifesting dif-
ferent combinations of those symptoms. Well-
integrated knowledge bases enable experts to
rapidly recall information and recognize pat-
terns or fundamental principles (Berliner, 2001;
Ropo, 2004) more quickly and efficiently and
thereby devote more mental effort to finding
solutions (Fadde, 2007). The more opportu-
nities learners have to learn and apply newly
acquired knowledge in authentic situations, the
better the learning outcome. This is why some
research in teacher education has demonstrated

the importance of providing preservice teach-
ers with practical teaching experiences that
enable them to learn how to use the knowledge
they are acquiring in their coursework, both
the subject knowledge and the effective peda-
gogies for enacting that knowledge (Darling-
Hammond, Hammerness, Grossman, Rust, &
Shulman, 2005).
Promote self-assessment of performance.
Performance feedback is essential to help-
ing learners recognize what effective prac-
tice looks like (Ericsson, 2014). Research has
shown external, expert feedback is not the
only kind of feedback that leads to success-
ful learning. Self-assessment or reflection on
one’s own learning is an equally important
factor. Reflecting on one’s performance in
terms of what did and did not work has been
shown to help learners transfer knowledge and
skills to new contexts (Scardamalia, Bereiter,
& Steinbach, 1984). The beneficial effects
of reflection are thought to occur because it
requires learners to retrieve knowledge and
prior experience from memory, connect these
ideas to new experiences, and then men-
tally rehearse what could be done differently
(Brown et al., 2014, p. 27). It should be noted
that the type of reflection that promotes suc-
cessful learning is focused, critical, and goal-
oriented (Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 2013), and
the ability to analyze performance accurately
is important for developing effective self-
reflection ( Zimmerman & Campillo, 2003).
Thus, to become self-reflective, learners will
need feedback on and practice analyzing per-

formance so they in turn can more effectively
evaluate the quality of their own performance.
Practices in Personnel Preparation
That Align With the Science on
Learning
Although there is no substantive research base
on teacher education, several reviews of
research have identified pedagogies that align
with the science on learning, and these peda-
gogies can be incorporated in a sequential way
into coursework and field experiences to pro-
mote special education preservice teachers’
competent practice (Dieker et al., 2014; Leko,
Brownell, Sindelar, & Murphy, 2012;
Kamman, McCray, Brownell, Wang, &
Ribuffo, 2014). For most pedagogies, evidence
supporting their effectiveness is at an emer-
gent level but can be considered promising
because they make use of several principles
known to promote successful learning and
effective performance. We concur with
Lignugaris-Kraft et al. (2014) in acknowledg-
ing these pedagogies would benefit from addi-
tional, more rigorous investigation.
Several reviews of research
have identified pedagogies that align
with the science on learning, and these

pedagogies can be incorporated in a
sequential way into coursework and field
experiences to promote special education
preservice teachers’ competent practice.
Deliberate, scaffolded practice opportunities.
A thorough review of the special education
preservice education literature revealed sev-
eral studies that incorporated deliberate prac-
tice with feedback linked to practical teaching
experiences (Leko et al., 2012). Findings from
studies reviewed showed teachers made prog-
ress acquiring knowledge and skills when
there was deliberate practice with feedback
built on knowledge and skills preservice teach-
ers were acquiring in coursework (Alexander,
Lignugaris-Kraft, & Forbush, 2007; Al Otaiba,
Lake, Greulich, Folsom, & Guidry, 2012; Al
Otaiba, Schatschneider, & Silverman, 2005;
Maheady, Jabot, Rey, & Michielli-Pendl, 2007;
Spear-Swerling, 2009). In the studies that fol-
low, preservice teachers had opportunities to
develop greater domain expertise by integrat-
ing their knowledge in key content areas with
practice and these opportunities were structured,
calibrated, and sequenced. They also received
feedback from more experienced educators or
were taught to analyze their own or a peer’s
instruction (Benedict, 2014; Mallette, Maheady,
& Harper, 1999), thus aligning with several
principles from the science on learning.
Structured tutoring. One deliberate prac-
tice opportunity is coursework coupled with
structured tutoring experiences. Within

special education, several research teams
have investigated the effects of this learning
arrangement and found it can (a) increase stu-
dent performance in reading (Al Otaiba, 2005;
Al Otaiba et al., 2012; Maheady, Mallette, &
Harper, 1996; Saddler & Staulters, 2008),
(b) improve preservice teachers’ ability to col-
lect data (Maheady et al., 1996), (c) improve
preservice teachers’ instructional practices
(Al Otaiba, 2005; Saddler & Staulters, 2008;
Spear-Swerling, 2009; Spear-Swerling &
Brucker, 2004), and (d) increase preservice
teachers’ knowledge (Al Otaiba, 2005; Al
Otaiba et al., 2012; Spear-Swerling, 2009;
Spear-Swerling & Brucker, 2004). As an
example, Al Otaiba (2005) investigated the
effects of a tutoring experience on eight pre-
service teachers’ knowledge of phonics and
English word structure. As part of a service-
learning project linked to a university-based
course, preservice teachers tutored English
language learners who were struggling in
reading. Preservice teachers implemented
a code-based tutorial program for 15 ses-
sions across 10 weeks. Al Otaiba reported
multiple benefits of the tutoring experience
including students who “gained an aver-
age of .18 standard score points per hour of
tutoring on word attack, .38 on word identi-
fication, and .30 on passage comprehension”
(p. 245). The preservice teachers’ knowledge
of language structure also improved from
57.5% to 99.4% questions answered cor-
rectly on the Structure of Language assess-
ment developed by Mather, Bos, and Babur

(2001). Analysis of preservice teacher reflec-
tive journals indicated the participants devel-
oped deeper and more practically informed
understandings of individualized instruction,
scaffolding, and behavior management.
Such positive outcomes were replicated
7 years later when Al Otaiba et al. (2012) con-
ducted a randomized-control trial that investi-
gated the differential effects of implementing
two early literacy tutoring programs on preser-
vice teacher knowledge, application, percep-
tions of preparedness, and student achievement.
One program was highly structured and
scripted, drew on evidence-based direct instruc-
tion practices, and included explicit code-
focused (i.e., phonemic awareness, phonics,
and fluency) and meaning-focused (i.e., vocab-
ulary and comprehension) instruction. The
other program only provided structured mean-
ing-focused instruction. Although both tutoring
programs led to gains in preservice teacher
Leko et al. 33
knowledge and student achievement, effect
sizes were larger for preservice teachers and
students in the more structured tutoring pro-
gram that included code and meaning-focused
instruction. Preservice teachers in this condi-
tion also reported feeling more prepared to
teach reading and demonstrated greater ability
to apply coursework knowledge.

Coursework coupled with field experiences. A
second learning arrangement that introduces
increased complexity in preservice teachers’
learning experience is coursework aligned
with supervised field experiences. Experts
assert this learning experience is critical to
preparing more effective teachers, because it
provides multiple opportunities for preservice
teachers to situate their learning in practical
experiences (Boyd, Grossman, Lankford,
Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2009), and without such
opportunities SETs were found to have dif-
ficulty applying their knowledge (Leko &
Brownell, 2011). Most teacher preparation
programs provide practical teaching oppor-
tunities, but these experiences vary widely
in duration and quality (Darling-Hammond,
Chung, & Frelow, 2002), and there is no
definitive model for crafting the ideal practi-
cally based learning experience. In fact, the
2010 Report of the Blue Ribbon Panel on
Clinical Preparation and Partnerships for
Improved Student Learning (National Council
for Accreditation of Teacher Education, 2010)
called for more focused research to identify
features of effective clinical preparation.
The extant literature does, however, pro-
vide some guiding principles that seem to
advance special education preservice teacher
knowledge and practice. Across several stud-
ies the coupling of content-area coursework
and carefully crafted field experiences that
provided abundant practice opportunities with
feedback increased preservice teacher knowl-
edge and skill and in some instances student

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