Abstract
What do special education practitioners want to learn and how do they want to learn it?
These questions drove a recent Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) Professional Development Needs Assessment Survey that revealed important insights that are already helping CEC tailor its programs to mirror the needs of practitioners across the field of special education.
Methodology
In early 2018, CEC contracted a third-party consultant (the Townsend Group and its research partner, Ruzinsky Research) to conduct a study of current trends, preferences, and priorities related to professional learning within the field of special education. The goal was to better understand the needs of professionals serving children with exceptionalities and to guide future development of CEC’s professional development offerings.
The majority of respondents to the survey were female (90%), experienced educators and administrators. Of the teachers who responded, the majority of respondents had been teaching for more than 20 years. Similarly, administrator respondents averaged about 11 years in their role.
The survey was sent to nearly 50,000 individuals, and 1,541 questionnaires were completed.
The professional roles of those who responded to the survey included the following:
Teacher (34%)
State or district administrator (27.8%)
Related service provider or other (22.1%)
Consultant (6.4%)
School administrator (3.6%)
Early interventionist (3.3%)
College or university student (2.4%)
Paraeducator (0.4%)
Course Formats
When asked about a preference between face-to-face and online courses, respondents were mixed, with nearly 40% expressing a preference for in-person activities or activities blending in-person and online learning formats. The primary reason cited for this preference was the type of interactions afforded by in-person instruction.
A smaller but still meaningful proportion (nearly a quarter of respondents) preferred online-only experiences. For these respondents, learning at their own pace, saving on travel expenses, and spending less time out of the classroom were the primary reasons behind that choice.
When asked who typically pays for registration and travel to professional development courses, 33.8% said their school, district, or organization paid, whereas 30.7% paid all the costs themselves. Others reported shared cost arrangements or other options.
Course Topics
The survey presented a range of topics (see Chart A) relevant to special education professionals and several questions were asked to identify professional development needs related to these topics.
Professional Development Topic Areas
When asked to indicate the most challenging concepts that consistently face special education teachers (what keeps them up at night), survey respondents gave the answers shown in Chart B. The largest group of respondents (58.3%) selected “developing meaningful behavior intervention plans.” Other prioritized topic areas included specially designed instruction (51.9%) and developing and documenting student plans (48.1%).
What Keeps Special Education Teachers Up at Night
Many of the respondents who provided an other response to this question offered a personalized or nuanced version of one of the preexisting answer choices. However, a topic that appeared consistently among the open-ended question responses was that of “working collaboratively with families” or “dealing with parents and other figures outside the student–teacher relationship.”
All survey respondents except for administrators were then asked how helpful each topic area would be to them professionally. Every topic area was perceived as being helpful, but looking at the very helpful responses only, “developing meaningful behavior intervention plans” was the most common response.
Administrators were asked to name professional development topics consistently requested by their teachers. Some of the common themes were as follows:
Assistive technology
Behavior management
Differentiated instruction
Training to address specific needs (autism spectrum disorder, depression, motivation issues, etc.)
Conclusion
This survey revealed clear preferences in professional learning from a demographic of experienced special education teachers and administrators. Data from this survey will be used by CEC in conjunction with other data, such as historical registration and attendance rates for courses by topic area, emerging trends in special education, and association industry trends and best practice in the design and delivery of professional development offerings, in their planning of future professional learning content.
The information gleaned from this survey will be shared with CEC constituencies in a variety of formats and has already influenced the organization’s professional development offerings for 2018. For more information on CEC’s available webinars, upcoming conventions, and other professional development opportunities, please visit the CEC website at https://www.cec.sped.org/Professional-Development.