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Creating a Digital Scenario Library for Inclusion
in the Instruction of ESP 444
Special Education Techniques in Regular Classrooms
A Proposal to Project THREAD from the Department of Special
Education
Kyle Higgins, Pam Campbell, & Ashley Skylar
October 2002
It is important to note that ESP 444 Special
Education Techniques in the Regular Classroom is required
by State of Nevada law to be taken by all initial licensure
students (not in the Depaertment of Special Education) who
graduate from the College of Education. The State Department
of Education requires that all initial licensure candidates
have a course in teaching students with disabilities in
order to be certified in Nevada. This requirement is similar
to requirements in other states for initial licensure.
Almost every discussion concerning learning
in American education eventually addresses the need to teach
higher order thinking skills such as critical thinking, decision-making,
and problem solving. These are skills that will benefit students
throughout their lifespan (Boyer, 1983). Nickerson (1988)
maintains that because of the increasingly fast-paced changes
in society, all students need to become independent thinkers
and learners who are able to "work smart", engage
in lifelong learning, and contribute to an increasingly complex
society. Research has shown that the mere accumulation of
factual or declarative knowledge is not sufficient to support
problem solving once a person enters the classroom (Anderson,
1987). An important consideration is that preservice students
learn to identify and define problems on their own rather
than simply respond to problems posed by others (Bransford
& Stein, 1984; Brown & Walters, 1983). In short, preservice
students must learn why, when, and how various skills and
concepts are relevant (Lesgold, 1988) so that they will spontaneously
use relevant knowledge to solve problems once they begin teaching
(Bransford, Franks, Vye, & Sherwood, 1989).
Researchers have begun to advocate that these
skills can be taught directly through an externally-controlled
sequence of activities that expose students to progressively
more complex tasks (CTGV, 1993; Collins, Carnine, & Gersten,
1987; Hofmeister, Engelmann, & Carnine, 1989; Woodward
& Carnine, 1989). The technology currently used to create
these externally-controlled sequence of activities is CD ROM.
The use of digital case studies/scenarios housed on a CD ROM
allows the instructor to expose preservice students to authentic
experiences previously difficult to provide in classroom settings
(e.g., observe a child who refuses to do work, observe a general
educator and a special educator planning a lesson for included
students with disabilities). These real-word scenarios provide
microworlds (Papert, 1980) that stimulate knowledge
incubation in students; and a macrocontext (CTGV,
1993) in which students collaboratively explore, invent and
think deeply about the issues presented in the digital scenario.
In this manner course instructors are able to teach complex,
generative problem posing and problem solving from multiple
perspectives.
An advantage to the use of digital based scenarios
in the instruction of general education preservice teachers
is that the digital scenarios allow the course instructor
to provide a structure to exploratory learning. Well designed
digital scenario instruction typically engages students in
a sequence of increasingly difficult problems, scenarios,
or activities and provides performance feedback to the pre-service
students. Thus, assuring that inexperienced pre-service students
discover important ideas and principles and develop an integrated
base of knowledge (Woodward & Carnine, 1988) as well as
notice the consequences of their explorations and draw appropriate
conclusions from those explorations (Charney, Reder, &
Kusbit, 1990; Duffield, 1990). Other advantages to digital
scenario instruction in ESP 444 Special Education Techniques
in the Regular Classroom include: (a) preservice students
learn in context the meaning of instructional goals and their
modifications for students with disabilities and are better
able to identify when they need to acquire more or new information,
(b) preservice students are able to contribute ideas about
areas in which they are especially knowledgeable and learn
from the contributions of others about areas in which they
have less knowledge---they generate knowledge rather than
merely receive it form someone else, (c) preservice students
have the opportunity to experience the process of continually
clarifying and revising ideas rather than simply being exposed
to the end products of the explorations of others, (d) preservice
students learn the kinds of problems and opportunities that
experts in education encounter and the knowledge these experts
use as tools, and (e) preservice students learn the meaning
of collaborative exploration---a common ground is provided
by the digital based scenarios that allows the preservice
students to share a set of experiences while simultaneously
exploring specific areas of personal interest.
This project will:
- Develop digital based scenarios concerning the inclusion
of students with disabilities into the general education
classroom to support the instruction in ESP 444 Special
Education Techniques in Regular Classrooms. This will include,
but not be limited to: (a) interviews with practicing special
educators who teach in the areas of mental retardation,
learning disabilities, emotional disabilities, early childhood
special education, autism, ADHD, bilingual special education,
physical disabilities, hearing impairments, visual disabilities,
severe and/or multiple disabilities, other health impairments,
and gifted education; (b) interviews with parents of children
with mental retardation, learning disabilities, emotional
disabilities, developmental disabilities, autism, ADHD,
physical disabilities, hearing impairments, visual disabilities,
severe and/or multiple disabilities, other health impairments,
and giftedness; (c) digital scenarios that spotlight children/youth
with disabilities in the classroom and in social situations;
(d) interviews with research experts n the areas of mental
retardation, learning disabilities, emotional disabilities,
early childhood special education, autism, ADHD, bilingual
special education, physical disabilities, hearing impairments,
visual disabilities, severe and/or multiple disabilities,
other health impairments, and gifted education: (e) digital
scenario examples of general educators and special educators
working together to devise appropriate educational plans
for students with disabilities who are included in the general
education classroom; (f) digital scenario examples of general
educators and special educators working together in the
general education classroom as they instruct students with
disabilities along side students without disabilities; and
(g) digital scenario examples of IEP meetings, ITP meetings,
IFSP meetings; digital scenario examples of the
inclusion of assistive technology into the general education
classroom to meet the social and instructional needs of
children/youth with disabilities.
- Develop a cross-referenced library of the created digital
scenarios. Through the cross referencing of the digital
scenarios, any instructor of ESP 444 will be able to pull
out specific scenarios of a child (academic & social),
their parent, their general education teacher, and their
special educator. The scenarios will present information
important for the pre-service teachers as well as present
situations that illustrate a point to be made by the course
instructor or provide a situation to be solved by the preservice
students. Also, available will be research experts in the
particular area being studied. These experts will provide
an added dimension to the information being offered by the
instructor of the course.
Benefits of the project to preservice students enrolled
in ESP 444
- Exposure to a variety of actual students with disabilities,
their families, their teachers (general & special education).
In this manner, the children/youth with disabilities become
much more than a category label, they become real human
beings with problems to be solved and strengths to be celebrated.
- Exposure to general educators and special educators as
they go through the process of planning and implementing
best practice instruction together for children/youth with
disabilities within the general education classroom.
- Exposure to problem scenarios through which preservice
teachers can practice and learn to apply best practice instruction
as well as collaboration skills.
- Exposure to experts in the field of special education
as they provide information concerning
- Opportunity to view the same scenario over and over to
dissect and discuss the components of a particular scenario
for better understanding of the complexities of teaching
and collaboration.
Benefits of the project to the instructors of ESP 444
- Each instructor of ESP 444 (there are usually 5 or more
sections of this course taught fall, spring & summer
as the course is required for every undergraduate student
in the college) will have access to the library of digital
scenarios on CD ROM created for this project. In this manner
each instructor of the course will be able to select the
scenarios that best illustrate the areas covered in his/her
class. The scenarios will be short enough to be incorporated
easily into WebCT or stored on a laptop computer and used
with PowerPoint.
Benefits to the instructors of other courses in the Department
of Special Education
Each instructor in the Department of Special Education will
have access to the library of digital scenarios created for
this project that will be housed on the iMac (bought for this
project) in the department workroom. In this manner each instructor
in the department will be able to select the scenarios that
best illustrate areas covered in courses other than ESP 444.
For example, the scenarios dealing with students with gifts
and talents could be incorporated into our ESP 741 Introduction
to Gifted Education course while the scenarios dealing
with general educators and special educators collaborating
could be used in our ESP 468 Collaborative Consulting
course. The scenarios produced by this project will be
appropriate for use in our undergraduate and graduate courses.
The scenarios will be short enough to be incorporated easily
into WebCT or storied on a laptop computer and used with PowerPoint.
Scenarios to be created for inclusion in ESP 444
- High Incidence (SEH, LD, MR, ADHD, Speech & Language)
=25 scenarios
- Parents
- Elementary children
- Secondary youth
- Teachers (general and special education)
- Research expert
- Low Incidence (PI, Severe MR, Autism, Hearing, Vision,
TBI) = 30 scenarios
- Parents
- Elementary children
- Secondary youth
- Teachers (general and special education)
- Research expert
- Legal Aspects = 8 scenarios
- LRE
- 504
- IDEA
- IEP (elementary & secondary)
- ITP (middle school & high school)
- IFSP
- Bilingual Special Education = 5 scenarios
- Parents
- Elementary children
- Secondary youth
- Teachers (general and special education)
- Research expert
- Students with disabilities from diverse groups (e.g.,
ethnicity, culturally, etc.) = 5 scenarios
- Parents
- Elementary children
- Secondary youth
- Teachers (general and special education)
- Research expert
- Assistive Technology = 5 scenarios
- Parents
- Elementary children
- Secondary youth
- Teachers (general and special education)
- Research expert
- Collaborative Consultation = 8 scenarios
- Parents
- OT
- PT
- School Psychologists
- Teachers (General & Special Education)
- Educational Assistants
- Adaptive PE
- Community Partners (e.g., Voc Rehab)
- Early Childhood Special Education = 5 scenarios
- Parents
- Birth to 3 years old
- 3-to-5 years old
- Teachers (general and special education)
- Research expert
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and view proposal
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