Teaching Students with Learning Difficulties or Disabilities: Regular Education Teachers’ Professional Development and Practices

Abstract

This article focuses on how curricular and pedagogical differentiation for students of special education is perceived by teachers of the second cycle of basic education in Portugal. The objectives of this research were (i) to inquire about the teachers’ perceptions regarding their training path and their training needs; (ii) to characterize the teaching practices of teachers, aimed at students of special education; and (iii) to learn the perceptions of these teachers regarding their curricular and pedagogical practices directed at students of special education—this called for an interpretative methodology. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and subjected to content analysis. The results indicate a widespread concern with teachers’ current professional development and the management of diversity. The respondents’ perceptions, shown as favorable to change, are in line with personalized work, enhancing visible contributions to students’ personal and social development.

What Makes a School a Happy School? Parents’ Perspectives

“…The importance of teachers is not a novel discovery. However, these results emphasize the need to prioritize teacher education, including education directed toward preparing them to deal with diversity in the classroom [69] and collaborative supervision practices geared toward ensuring educational quality [70].…”

Quality of regular students versus distance students, degree graduate programs in Ghanaian Universities

“…Also, typical learning tools may still be used with remote distribution, thus it's compatible with various teaching techniques and technology. We lack a detailed account of whether this type of interaction facilitates communication and collaboration between instructors and students, but it does expand learning beyond the confines of the university and removes some of the constraints placed on learning, such as distance and location (Oliveira & Coutinho, 2023; Roorda et al, 2021; Teresa & Keno, 2022; Yeboah & Gyamfi, 2022) [10,14,16,19] [1,9,21] , age (Eijl et al, 2023;Yan et al, 2021;Yeboah & Gyamfi, 2022) [6,19] , and prior experience (Zhang & Hennebry-Leung, 2023) [20] are among the variables that influence students' level of comfort with communication and collaboration when using distance learning. Other key situational factors that affect students' communication and cooperation in distant learning, however, have received little attention.…”