Beginning Teachers in Special Education: A Model For Providing Individualized Support

Abstract

In the face of acute personnel shortages, large numbers of beginning special education teachers are abandoning their chosen careers. Under the best of conditions, novice special educators are both a valuable and fragile resource with even the most motivated and best prepared experiencing frustration, stress, and disillusionment. In this article we describe a model for providing individualized and comprehensive support for beginning special educators. The underlying assumption of the model is that support for beginning teachers must take into account the full series of dynamic interacting factors that are (a) specific to the individual and (b) specific to the teaching environment and tasks that are to be accomplished. After describing the interacting factors in the model, we provide recommendations for implementation of the beginning teacher support model. A necessary prerequisite for the provision of quality educational services to students with special needs is to have an appropriate number of qualified teachers available to serve them. Unfortunately, recent data indicate that there is a critical national shortage of appropriately credentialed special educators (USDOE, 1996). There are a number of reasons for the acute shortage of qualified special educators. First and foremost, the number of students with disabilities continues to increase while the supply of special educators exiting from accredited institutions of higher education (IHEs) is shrinking. Second, a significant number of special educators are leaving their positions. Boe, Cook, Bobbitt, and Weber (1995), for example, found that the retention of special education teachers from one year to the next is significantly less than the retention of general education teachers-89% compared with 94%. In an investigation of individuals who did leave the profession, Brownell, Smith, and Miller (1995) found that disgruntled leavers frequently cited working conditions as a major reason for their abandonment of their job. In interviews with the researchers, the randomly selected leavers stated that they left their positions because they felt overwhelmed, unsupported, unprepared, and/or disempowered. Other researchers have reported similar job-related factors associated with special education teacher attrition. In a series of studies

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Disparities in Work Conditions Among Early Career Special Educators in High- and Low-Poverty Districts

“…Taking into consideration the challenges teachers face entering teaching, researchers emphasize the importance of responsive induction programs for early career special education teachers (Billingsley, 2005;Boyer & Gillespie, 2000;Mastropieri, 2001;Rosenberg, Griffin, Kilgore, & Carpenter, 1997;White & Mason, 2006). Induction programs specifically designed to meet the needs of early career teachers have the potential to increase teacher retention as well as improve teacher practice (Guarino, Santibanez, & Daley, 2006;Johnson & Birkeland, 2003;Smith & Ingersoll, 2004;Whitaker, 2000).…”

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