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This study addressed the effect of casual exposure to braille on the attitudes toward blindness and the use of braille of three groups of sighted university students: students in two sections of a general linguistics course for language arts teachers, one taught by a blind instructor (Group 1) and the other taught by a sighted instructor (Group 2), and students in an English composition class (Group 3). Overall, the respondents in Group 1 expressed the most positive attitudes toward blindness and toward braille. These results suggest that individual readers of braille can positively affect attitudes toward braille.

To develop a rationale for requiring a free-standing philosophy of education course in preservice teacher programs, the researchers reviewed prior literature to construct a framework to establish such a requirement. A review of required course content in non-Catholic (private and public) colleges and universities with preservice teacher programs in five Midwestern states in the United States revealed that most do not require such a course, hence the need for programs to reconsider how licensure candidates develop their teaching philosophies and review program articulation and course content. This study proposes a fourfold theoretical rationale for requiring philosophy of education of preservice teachers.