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Full-Text Articles in Education
Critical Skills For Special Educator Effectiveness: Which Ones Matter Most, And To Whom?, Sara B. Woolf
Critical Skills For Special Educator Effectiveness: Which Ones Matter Most, And To Whom?, Sara B. Woolf
Publications and Research
Special education teachers are expected to fulfill diverse teaching and non-teaching tasks in comparison to their general education peers. However, their performance is evaluated with measures that were normed for use with general education teachers. These specialty teachers are also routinely evaluated by professionals who may lack formal special education training or experience. These conditions render special educators vulnerable for inaccurate performance evaluation. Explicit research is needed to clarify the professional skills that are most critical to special educators’ professional effectiveness and ensure continuity of focus on these skills in preservice teacher education and employment contexts. This qualitative study builds …
Special Education Professional Standards: How Important Are They In The Context Of Teacher Performance Evaluation?, Sara B. Woolf
Special Education Professional Standards: How Important Are They In The Context Of Teacher Performance Evaluation?, Sara B. Woolf
Publications and Research
Teacher performance evaluation represents a high stakes issue as evidenced by its pivotal emphasis in national and local education reform initiatives and federal policy levers. National, state, and local education leaders continue to experience unprecedented pressure to adopt standardized benchmarks to reflect and link student achievement data to formal teacher performance evaluations. No teacher performance evaluation measures have been developed for use with special education teachers or the settings in which they teach. Dedicated focus is needed to ensure that adopted evaluation measures are sensitive to the specific expertise reflected in the practices of specialty teachers and valid for use. …