Teachers--Training of--Florida

One of the recent trends in special education is inclusion. A new instructional strategy, coteaching, assists teachers in meeting the demands of a diverse group of students. Coteaching involves general and special educators jointly planning, instructing, and assessing all learners in an integrated classroom. The purpose of this study was to compile descriptive research on the prevalence of coteaching in Florida and investigate the degree to which Florida's state universities are preparing preservice teachers for a coteaching instructional setting. The data was collected through surveys that were completed by university faculty and facilitators at the Florida Inclusion Network (FIN). The data were analyzed using a frequency and percentage table. As a result, coteaching was found to be quite prevalent in Florida. According to participants, preservice programs at the universities should include training for coteaching settings.

Potentially, the most important response to widespread criticism about the quality of writing and writing instruction is Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC). WAC can mean a total immersion in writing, horizontally in all departments and vertically at all grade levels. It can encompass current writing theory, but only if teachers understand such theory and can apply it. WAC theory must be incorporated into the entire process of professional preparation. WAC philosophy believes that (a) writing can be learned and should be taught, (b) writing is a way to clarify thought, (c) writing is a way to learn, and (d) writing is a complex, individualized process. This understanding is required to teach in a successful WAC program. The literature offers little evidence that schools of education feel a responsibility to emphasize writing and writing instruction at the preservice level. Therefore, a study was initiated to survey the eight Florida schools of education that are members of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) for the purpose of determining practices and perceptions regarding WAC. This descriptive research called for two survey questionnaires, which invited responses from 8 administrators and 250 secondary education students and tested 11 hypotheses. These hypotheses related to required courses for writing and writing instruction, student understanding of WAC theory, student perception of WAC status, level of student confidence to write and use writing, student willingness to become writing teachers, and student perception of the importance of writing. The remainder of the study recommends a required preservice course in WAC for all future teachers and suggests some components that course should contain.

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Certification is one way in which teachers can demonstrate excellence in teaching. This study was conducted in order to examine the effect of the professional development experiences on overall scores on the assessment of candidates for National Board Certification RTM in Florida. The study was conducted using the entire population of candidates in Florida (1,787) during the 2000--2001 assessment cycle. A survey was used to collect data from the candidates. Of the surveys sent, 62% were returned and used in the study. The survey included questions regarding the educational background, demographics, and professional development experiences of the teachers. To examine the effect of professional development experiences on the overall National Board Certification assessment scores, a multiple regression analysis was used. A predictive discriminant analysis was used to predict passing or non-passing group membership. The criterion variable used was the score on the National Board Certification assessment. Results indicated that professional development experiences coupled with background and demographics contributed significantly to a candidate's overall score. In the full model, controlling for all of the other variables in the model, holding an advanced degree in the field was found to contribute to the predictive accuracy of the model. Also, the number of hours preparing the portfolio and preparing for the assessment center also contributed to the predictive accuracy of the model. Bivariate correlations indicated that there was a positive correlation between candidates' overall scores and the number of hours of professional development. There was a positive correlation between the overall score and the amount of time preparing the portfolio entries and for the assessment center. The predictive accuracy of the full model for predicting passing and non-passing group membership was 58.7%. Tests of significance for the unique contribution of each subset of variables to the cross-validated classification accuracy of the full model were insignificant.