Special Education Curriculum Improvement Ideas

Special Education Curriculum Improvement Ideas

First Course -- Foundations of Educational Leadership

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One of the goals of the special education teacher should be to research ideas through the literature that can produce creative curricula reforms or innovations for the classroom. In this paper two suggestions will be offered in order to provide fresh ideas that can bring greater success and a sense of result-oriented intervention to the special education classroom. Parent training should be given consideration, and children with mild disabilities can and should participate in general education classrooms notwithstanding that some discourage this strategy.

Training Parents -- Boosting Curricula

Children with autism spectrum disorders are among those students who are said to have "special needs" in special education classrooms, but if there are barriers to the strategy of training parents to work with their children, those barriers need to be broken down. In their peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions the authors suggest that there are several obstacles to involving parents in training programs: a) teachers are "rarely trained in how to use parent education strategies"; b) most special education teachers are prepared in pedagogic matters relating to students, but not adults, and hence they may lack the knowledge as to how adults learn; c) the majority of "evidence-based parent training models" are not available to teachers; and d) there isn't a good fit between empirically-based parent education models and the structure of special education curricula (Ingersoll, 2006, p. 79).

Moreover, because special education teachers have their hands full dealing with their students' needs, keeping the existing curriculum materials on time and on target, there needs to be an intervention to provide those teachers with the support materials and training they need, Ingersoll continues. With that in mind, the authors offer a model that can be helpful, even pivotal in terms of a teacher adding a parent intervention into the existing curriculum. The model entails teachers being trained to train parents; once ready to train parents, teachers spend about 2.5 hours per session (and about 18-20 hours outside of the typical school day) for several weeks. The data that is linked to this model should be systematically gathered prior to involving parents.

Special Needs Children in General Education Classes

It is not uncommon for children with disabilities to be placed during a portion of their school day in general education classes, however too often the teachers in general education classes have not instituted "instructional changes in the form, focus and delivery" of that general education curriculum (King-Sears, 2008, p. 55). Hence, good ideas need to be brought to the fore so special education teachers can help students progress in a society that is too often indifferent to their needs. King-Sears presents and then rebuts two fallacies vis-a-vis that students with disabilities cannot master content that "…at times seems to be swiftly passing them by" (56).