IU SBC Fellows: Good Practices

Good Practice from Catherine A. Shea, IU Southeast

Title	Using Technology to Make Professional Development Accessible to Special Education Teachers
Course or Project	Special Education: Electronic Enhancement of Supervision (EESP)
Audience	Graduate students
Active	2000-2001, still active
Background Information	Two groups of public school teachers were involved in the Electronic Enhancement of Supervision Project. One group was supervision mentors who were experienced special education teachers in elementary and secondary schools in Indiana. These mentors were selected based on their skills as teachers and ability to effectively supervise college students who come to their classrooms to gain valuable practical experience. The other group consisted of special education teachers who had less experience supervising college students; these teachers were mentees. The thrust of the project was to teach the supervision mentors how to use their own successful experiences to guide other teachers who were inexperienced classroom supervisors. Desktop conferencing, discussion list, and the Web site were used to share information and guidance. Supervision-mentors worked with university faculty to develop scenarios that illustrated real-world dilemmas and situations involving the supervision of university students preparing to be special education teachers.
Teaching Challenge	A major problem in the field of special education is the shortage of teachers entering and remaining in the profession. Turnover creates a steady stream of new teachers, some of whom start their careers on emergency certification (i.e., having permission to teach special education without already having the appropriate experience and education). This means that the quality of the supervision received by undergraduates from teachers can be compromised if the supervising teacher, though certified, has had a fragmented educational experience due to being initially emergency certified. Mediocre supervision of some students preparing to become teachers potentially adds to the likelihood that these same students will fail to seek teaching positions. Another problem addressed by EESP is the high cost of providing supervision by university faculty. Traveling to remote schools to meet with supervising teachers is time consuming and expensive. The mentoring done by the supervision-mentors and desktop conferencing can supplement and in some cases replace on-site visits.
Good Practice	The "good practices" implemented were (a) using technology to make professional development accessible, (b) capitalizing on mentoring by experienced teachers, and (c) employing real-world problems. EESP had four phases lasting approximately 12 months. Procedures developed by IUS faculty and exemplary classroom supervisors (supervision-mentors) were piloted with six additional classroom teachers. Procedures included identifying supervision skills and providing mentorship training to the supervision-mentors. The project’s electronically enhanced supervision was designed to supplement on-site visits to classrooms. The timeline and major activities were: PHASE I: Summer, 2000. IUS faculty and supervision-mentors met on-campus to prepare training material and procedures, pilot technology, create assessment tools, learn mentoring, and collect pre-project data. PHASE II: Fall, 2000. IUS faculty and supervision-mentors piloted technology at schools, developed a Web site, role-played likely supervision scenarios and selected six other classroom teachers for PHASE III. PHASE III: Spring, 2001. Six classroom supervisors were mentored via email by three supervision-mentors and received training and support from IUS faculty through webcam, electronic discussion list, Web sites, and site visits. Post-project data were collected. PHASE IV: Summer, 2001. The final report was written, including recommendations for using technology enhanced supervision training. Dissemination activities were begun.
Impact	Benefits included: 1. A new Web site designed to improve classroom teachers’ supervision skills was launched. Of particular benefit were real-world scenarios submitted by participants. 2. All participants improved their technology skills. 3. Supervision mentors provided valuable suggestions for improving the training of supervisors. 4. ILTE staff gained awareness of how higher education and public schools differed in the availability of technology and project implementation steps. 5. Project directors learned strategies to work within the centralized technology organizational structure that determined if projects could be implemented. 6. Project directors learned how to match high, medium and low tech solutions to communication problems.
Assessment	The students completed three anonymous questionnaires at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the semester. All questionnaires were modeled on the Likert scale from 7 (strongly agree) to 1(strongly disagree). Teachers who attended the workshop completed an anonymous questionnaire as well.
Keywords	Real-world problems, simulations, accessibility
Technical Format	Customized Web site
Relevant URLs	http://homepages.ius.edu/Special/EESP/

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