Abstract
As we close our 6-year tenure as editors of Teacher Education and Special Education (TESE), we wanted to take a moment to reflect on our experiences and considerations for the field. We commemorated the beginning of our editorship by publishing what we affectionately refer to as “The Sages” special issue (Volume 43, Issue 1). In this issue, we invited premier experts within the Teacher Education Division (TED) (i.e., Sages) of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) to provide historical and future-oriented perspectives on several compelling issues within the field. We offer this editorial as the bookend of sorts to our work with TESE.
We entered the editorship with a clear desire to uphold the journal’s mission of serving as a premier research forum for special education teacher education. TESE’s rising Impact Factor is a testament to the journal’s prominence among special education journals and recognition that scholarship in this field is relevant and rigorous. Having had the privilege to read many excellent manuscripts, yet the dilemma of only being able to publish a small handful, has humbled us and sharpened our awareness of the countless unanswered questions and issues ever present in the field. Some of these issues are nascent and pressing such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) in teacher education. These issues, often resulting from rapid advances in technology or changes to state policies, spring up quickly, demand immediate attention, and often position scholars as reactive agents of change. Others we would categorize as persistent dilemmas—issues that have plagued us for decades, seem intractable, yet must be addressed if we are to uphold the promise that students with disabilities are entitled to an appropriate, inclusive, and equitable education.
During our editorship, we have also had many opportunities to contemplate the status and rigor of research in teacher education and special education. We believe our field has made enormous strides in elevating its scholarship and dissemination efforts, and yet, the question remains: How do we
Improving Research in Teacher Education and Special Education
Although the potential list of topics that fit within this discussion is expansive, we limit our thoughts to three focal areas: advancing equity, measurement, and methodological diversity. We believe attending to these topics is necessary for the field to continue improving its research efforts, though these three areas do not represent the full constellation of possibilities. We selected these three because they (a) have cropped up consistently during our editorship as both persistent and pressing issues, (b) are issues being explored in broader research arenas in the Social Sciences, and/or (c) might serve as foundations upon which other improvements would emanate.
Advancing Equity
In 2024, we completed a comprehensive content analysis of TESE as part of a chapter in the second edition of the Handbook of Research on Special Education Teacher Preparation (see Griffin et al., 2024). In sum, across research in special education workforce development (i.e., attracting, preparing, sustaining special educators), the theme emphasized the least was diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. For example, there was little about how best to ensure the special education teacher workforce includes teachers of color, disabled teachers, LGBTQ+ teachers, multilingual teachers, and so many more groups who are underrepresented in today’s schools. There was also little about how to best prepare the special education teacher workforce to effectively address the needs of students who comprise these marginalized and minoritized groups. To us, it is clear more research is needed to address these gaps within our field. This recommendation is also pervasive in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s (NASEM) recommendations to the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), National Center for Education Research (2022). Recommendation 5.2 states, “Within each of its existing and future topic area competitions, IES should emphasize the need for research focused on equity” (NASEM, 2022, p. 4). In essence, we need more research focused on issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in special education teacher preparation.
We argue, however, that this issue extends beyond needing more research “about” such issues and encompasses research that itself “is conducted” in accordance with principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The IES Standards for Excellence in Education Research (SEER) include equity as a primary standard specifying “Researchers who are designing and testing interventions must clearly demonstrate how those interventions address education inequities, such as by improving learners’ outcomes and/or their access to resources and opportunities” (IES, 2022, p. 3).
In implementing this standard, recommended practices for researchers include:
SEER Equity Recommendation 1: Discussing how their study conceptualizes education equity, and how the study’s design, sample, measurement, analysis, and reporting align to that conceptualization.
SEER Equity Recommendation 2: Designing studies that allow valid estimates to be calculated for different groups within the sample to improve our understanding of the extent to which policies, practices, and interventions yield varying outcomes for different groups, especially those groups that have been historically underserved.
SEER Equity Recommendation 3: Designing interventions that take into account the contexts and systems in which they will be implemented.
SEER Equity Recommendation 4: Describing how they will consider input from learners, educators, and/or other key stakeholders when conceptualizing, designing, and reporting the results of their research, and when considering issues critical for implementation and scaling of interventions (IES, n.d., pp. 4–12).
For a more detailed discussion of these recommended practices, see Best Practices and Challenges for Embedding Equity in Education Research for further recommendations at: https://ies.ed.gov/ncer/whatsnew/techworkinggroup/pdf/TASEBUEquityTWG.pdf. In the subsequent sections on measurement and methodological diversity, we draw attention to these practices when possible.
The American Psychological Association (APA) (2021) also recommends practices for advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion through its inclusive reporting standards. In addition to including detailed participant demographic descriptions in the method section and article abstract, APA recommends researchers include evidence to justify their sample demographics. For example, researchers should describe their participant inclusion efforts and how they worked to ensure samples are inclusive of participants according to gender, race/ethnicity, language, disability, socio-economic status, etc. This could be included as a subsection within the participant/sampling section of a manuscript or included in the cover letter that accompanies a manuscript submission.
Another recommendation from APA is to report the year(s) during which data were collected as this may provide greater context for the study and its participants’ experiences. The documentation that a study took place during COVID-19, the #MeToo movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and other past and future influential societal events may contribute to greater understandings and interpretations of a study’s findings and its ensuing implications.
Researchers should also engage in reflexive practice around their identity and positionality. It is encouraging that, at least based on our anecdotal evidence, positionality statements are being included more routinely in qualitative and mixed-methods research manuscripts. This has been a long-standing quality indicator of qualitative research given the methodology’s stance of “researcher as instrument” (Brantlinger et al., 2005; Trainor & Graue, 2014). Yet, we believe such reflexivity is important for all types of research designs. Quantitative researchers should also reflect on how their intersectional identities may or may not relate to and influence what is researched and how. Informally, researchers could adopt a reflexive stance throughout the research process by simply posing a series of questions to themselves as they design and execute research studies. For example, “Why am I recruiting this group of participants vs. another?” or “How might my beliefs about _____ influence the way I discuss and offer implications from findings from this research?” Jamieson et al. (2023), who are quantitative researchers, provide additional sample questions and recommendations for embedding reflexivity in one’s research, and the QR Collective (2023) situates the discussion of reflexivity within special education research. More formally, researchers could be encouraged or required to include a positionality section within a manuscript or within an author note regardless of methodological approach.
Measurement
We assert here and in our Handbook chapter (Griffin et al., 2024) that the lack of valid and reliable measures in special education teacher education research is a persistent dilemma. Others (e.g., Brownell et al., 2011, 2020; Goldhaber, 2019; Richmond et al., 2018) have also noted this deficiency suggesting several recommendations for the field. First, measurement research in special education teacher education needs to address all types of measures, including (a) distal measures that evaluate the general effectiveness of teacher preparation and professional development programs and (b) measures proximal to the teaching-learning process (e.g., classroom observations, lesson plans, instructional logs) by conducting both quantitative and qualitative studies, while targeting aspects of teacher knowledge, practice, and disposition. Although the development of teacher measures and associated implementation practices should be a priority, the second recommendation is to improve existing measures while also expanding the number of available measures that focus on PK-12 student outcomes, as another way to improve the content and pedagogy in teacher education and influence policy. The third recommendation extends the previous two. As measures become more rigorously researched and increase in number, all study designers should carefully consider various types of assessment tools, using multiple measures in research for better understanding the teaching and learning of teachers and their students (e.g., Grissom & Youngs, 2016; Kane & Staiger, 2012). A single assessment rarely provides the kind of data needed for interpreting the complexities of special education teacher education content and pedagogy, particularly when evaluating aspects of inclusive contexts (Bacon & Blachman, 2017; Pugach, 2017) as context can impact teacher education outcomes.
For example, Ronfeldt’s (2015) study of school contexts used for field placements found that student teachers placed in schools with (a) stronger teacher collaboration, (b) a history of student achievement gains, and (c) better teacher retention were found to be more effective at improving student achievement when subsequently employed in a different school, based on their value-added modeling (VAM) scores. These findings indicate that student teachers learn to teach in better functioning and more supportive schools, regardless of the types of schools they teach in after graduation. This one example highlights several SEER recommended practices in that it draws attention to the need for researchers to be keenly aware of research contexts (i.e., community, school, classroom) and the expressed needs of the multiple stakeholders found within these contexts before conducting measurement research, or any research, to ensure equity in education.
To encourage researchers in special education teacher education to design and implement more measurement studies, we discuss a few recent example measurement studies found in high-impact journals for gleaning insights into the future of measurement research, especially research in special education teacher education. We present brief synopses of these studies by the type of teacher measures evaluated (i.e., practice, knowledge, dispositions) and offer several thoughts and implications.
Practice
We begin with a recent systematic review of studies of impact evaluations of teacher preparation practices (Mancenido, 2024). This review was conducted to assist teacher education researchers in “designing more rigorous impact evaluations of teacher preparation practices” (p. 269). According to the author, impact evaluations are designed to investigate the effectiveness of specific practices on teachers’ knowledge, skills, dispositions, and/or their students’ learning. Mancenido endorses the development of impact evaluations that offer “complimentary evidence not currently prevalent in the field” (p. 271). Unfortunately, few available impact evaluations are backed by the research necessary to support their intended causal claims.
Specifically, we support Mancenido’s recommendation that researchers develop measures of teaching practice and student outcomes that can be used in the context of teacher education programs, such as teaching simulations (e.g., Cohen & Berlin, 2020) and rubrics and rating scales for evaluating teacher candidates’ (TCs) projects (e.g., Kloser et al., 2017). Several instruments like these (≈300) are found on the EdInstruments website (https://edinstruments.org/). Regrettably, few of these instruments are specific to students with disabilities revealing an obvious need for special education teacher education researchers to contribute to this effort.
In general, teacher education researchers must attend to issues of internal validity (maturation, selection, history, attrition), and external validity (generalizability) in measurement research, as they should in most research studies. Rodgers et al. (2022) focused on approaches to validity found in studies involving classroom observation instruments and teachers of students with disabilities in their recent systematic review. Given the importance of the quality of inferences (i.e., scoring, generalization, extrapolation, and implication inferences; C. A. Bell et al., 2012) drawn from these instruments and that observation instruments are prone to measurement error (e.g., Boguslav & Cohen, 2024), Rodgers and colleagues evaluated the validity evidence found in 102 special education studies. Findings revealed that most of the studies reviewed provided minimal evidence to support accuracy, consistency, and lack of bias (i.e., scoring inference) in the instruments used. Likewise, limited validity evidence was found in studies of generalization or extrapolation inferences. Because implication inference fell outside of the scope of their study, Rodgers et al. called for further research in this area. In addition, the authors lamented the relatively large number of different observation systems they found making conclusions across instruments difficult. We encourage special education teacher education researchers to conduct replication studies for improving the design of instruments studied previously. Finally, Rodgers et al. offer two positive examples of the work of special education research teams that offset the general lack of validity evidence they found across studies: Work conducted by E.S. Johnson and colleagues on RESET (e.g., Johnson et al., 2021) and by Brownell, Jones, Pua, and colleagues (e.g., Jones et al., 2022; Pua et al., 2021) on the Preservice Observation Instrument for Special Education (POISE).
Boguslav and Cohen’s (2024) study of two observational measures of TCs’ instructional practice focuses on the concept of reliability in measurement research. These researchers investigated both the reliability and sensitivity (i.e., the degree to which a measure can detect differences between TCs, to identify skills for which teachers need more support) of two observational measures (i.e., the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, Pianta & Hamre, 2009; and a measure of TCs’ implementation of skills taken from simulation-based instructional activities, Lampert & Graziani, 2009). Findings revealed that these measures detected few differences between TCs, with only 20% of the variation in scores representing consistent differences between individual TCs, thereby providing little information for teacher educators to use to help TCs make improvements in their teaching after specific preparation experiences were completed. These findings reveal the importance of (1) supplementing global assessments with more specific measures of aspects of teaching, (2) reducing the influence of various classroom contexts on TCs’ scores, (3) evaluating how classroom mentor teachers influence TCs learning, (4) conducting multiple observations of TCs over time, and (5) using statistical adjustments that correct for low reliability and isolate consistent differences between TCs, suggesting that teacher education researchers seek methodological support for analyzing their data.
Knowledge
Despite calls for improving the domain expertise among teachers (e.g., Ball et al., 2008; Hill et al., 2004), including teachers of students with disabilities (e.g., Brownell et al., 2009), and subsequent research revealing significant positive associations between teacher knowledge and student achievement outcomes (e.g., Kelcey, 2011), research on special education teacher knowledge remains a critical need. Most of the extant research has been conducted with general education teachers (Brownell et al., 2020), and recent studies reveal special education teachers’ lack of knowledge of literacy (i.e., phonological sensitivity, phonemic awareness, decoding, encoding, and morphology, Porter et al., 2022) and mathematics (i.e., fractions, Copur-Gencturk, 2021) for teaching, with special educators scoring lower than their general education colleagues and content specialists.
Unlike studies that collect self-report data from teachers on what they believe their knowledge and skills may be, example studies discussed below employed valid and reliable measures for evaluating teachers’ knowledge and skills with the intent of improving their, and ultimately their students,’ learning outcomes. In the first example, we share results from a recent study of special education teachers’ knowledge and skills of data-based instruction, their writing instruction fidelity, and writing instruction self-efficacy. Shanahan et al. (2023) did not develop or pilot measures in their study but examined existing teacher-level measures (e.g., Bresina & McMaster, 2020; Graham et al., 2001; Graham et al., 2002; McMaster et al., 2020). They were interested in the predictive validity of these measures and hypothesized that teachers’ writing instruction fidelity, their knowledge and skills related to data-based instruction (DBI), and their instructional beliefs about writing would predict teachers’ students’ growth in writing. Findings suggest that teachers’ DBI knowledge and skills were related to their students’ early writing outcomes; however, teachers’ writing instruction fidelity and their beliefs were not. The authors conjecture that teachers’ knowledge and skills associated with DBI allowed them to better individualize their instruction for students which could explain the significant association between teacher knowledge and skills and student learning. The authors call for further research on special education teachers’ instructional beliefs and self-efficacy, and specifically on the writing instructional fidelity measure they used given its limited content. They suggested adding aspects of data-based decision-making to the original version, such as the quality of instructional changes made by teachers, and then using the revised version in future studies.
Although improving research on teacher knowledge in the content areas such as reading, mathematics, and writing is essential, N. Bell et al. (2022) have recently evaluated teachers’ equity knowledge, skills, and beliefs after teachers participated in an equity intervention designed to address issues of race, among other equity concerns. Within a mixed-methods study, Bell and colleagues used the Equity Scenario Response Survey (N. S. Bell & Codding, 2024), a measure of equity knowledge and skills that includes classroom-based and historical scenarios and open-ended questions. Findings from the quantitative portion of the study suggest that the intervention was effective in helping teacher candidates develop their equity knowledge in comparisons before and after completion of student teaching experiences. Use of a mixed-methods design helped the researchers better understand the impact of the intervention when informed from a critical perspective, prompting them to call for further research in this area using a mixed-methods design. N. Bell et al. (2022) also called for further research on measuring equity and social justice constructs.
Dispositions
Teacher education programs emphasize the development of teacher knowledge and practice, and although researchers and teacher educators have been concerned about preservice and early career teachers’ dispositions, this construct has been under-researched and inappropriately applied in teacher education programs largely due to the wide range of definitions posited (Damon, 2007) and lack of validated assessments for measuring the construct (Borko et al., 2007). Literature on dispositions in the field of teacher education (e.g., Thornton, 2006) are grounded in the fields of philosophy, ethics, and psychology, and despite the lack of consensus around definitions of dispositions, this construct has been generally viewed as interconnected with attitudes, values, and beliefs but also contain patterns of behaviors that are voluntarily, frequently, and intentionally displayed (Katz, 1993). The active nature of dispositions requires teachers to move beyond reflection, self-assessment, and perceptions to address the “often-noticed gap between our abilities and our actions” (Ritchhart, 2001, p. 3).
Recently, Bullough (2023) discussed many of the issues associated with dispositions within teacher education that continue today and included a critique of established approaches to developing and evaluating teacher dispositions found in the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO; 2017) InTASC and CAEP (2022) standards. Bullough then proposes an alternative conceptualization of dispositions as “manners of democracy” (p. 320). Based on his earlier work on schooling in a democracy (Bullough & Rosenberg, 2018), Bullough (2023) proposed a framework for teacher education for (a) thinking about teacher character and character formation and (b) engaging in program development. To these two aims, we add a third (i.e., enhancing research on teacher dispositions). Bullough’s model begins with hospitality, the first manner of democracy: To be hospitable is to be welcoming to our place, our commons, our program, our classroom. It is to be interested in and curious about another person’s experience and understanding of self and world. It is to wish to engage, not to change or fix but to authentically encounter another, at first a stranger, perhaps later, a friend as well as a classmate or colleague. (p. 321)
The second manner, attuned listening, requires genuine interest in, and respect for, the other as an equal with the goal of understanding. People in positions of power would be expected to do a lot of listening. The third manner of democracy is voice (i.e., “. . . to speak sincerely, honestly, and respectfully,” p. 322). Communication involves both speaking and listening within a humble, yet courageous, relationship between speakers. The fourth manner of democracy is reflectivity. Thinking reflectively during communication typically occurs at a point of doubt or confusion but remains coupled with open-mindedness or thought that is considerate of the other. Reflectivity will lead to the final manner of democracy, the evidential discernment, where judgment of the validity and truthfulness of the evidence put forth occurs using knowledge, skills, and virtues. In general, this framework of democratic manners serves as “an explicit vision, a moral framework, to guide both program development and social action” for establishing the “. . . kind and quality of relationships they [teacher educators] desire and the sort of community they wish to build and share . . .” (p. 316). In our view, one of the strengths of this framework is that the manners of democracy are like definitions of dispositions noted above in that attitudes, values, and beliefs are coupled with action, unlike current standards and assessments that may not evaluate dispositions (Jensen et al., 2023). The framework also has potential for addressing current societal divisions and conflicts between groups by helping people come together in support of a conceptual model that parallels participation in a nation that upholds democratic principles.
After discerning this alternative way of thinking about teacher dispositions and potentially moving into program development as Bullough recommends, we suggest considering how the framework might help to strengthen research on teacher dispositions and offer a couple suggestions here. First, the framework could be used as a conceptual framework, or tool, for justifying a research problem, defining concepts (e.g., dispositions), establishing a theoretical and empirical rationale, selecting appropriate methods (e.g., variables, measures), and interpreting results relative to extant theory and research (Antonenko, 2015). Thus, the framework could become a roadmap for a research study from start to finish, guiding researchers throughout the inquiry process. Such a framework may also serve as a tentative theory or model and enhance the study’s validity.
Regarding measurement, Bullough (2023) brings up an important point about measuring improvement in teacher dispositions. He suggested that researchers look for “signs of maturation as evident in the direction of growth and the broadening and increasing sensitivity of valuing” (Bullough, 2023, p. 318), rather than assume that teachers will eventually possess complete and permanent attainment of all manners of democracy, or even continue an upward trajectory overtime. Expression of positive dispositions can ebb and flow in everyone, for a variety of reasons, thus using pretests followed by posttests only is inadequate in research on dispositions. Repeated measurements administered and collected across multiple situations and evaluated together are more likely to provide stronger evidence for making judgments about teachers’ dispositions. As Runyan and Steinke (2015) relate, “using one or two situational tests to examine whether an individual possesses a disposition, or virtue, is an insufficient and unreliable approach to testing dispositional stability and robustness” (p. 3).
A final thought relates to the second manner of democracy, attuned listening. Given the unquestionable importance of explicit instruction and special educators’ use of verbal communication in classrooms that include students with disabilities, research on teachers’ use of listening has been largely ignored in special education. What more do we need to know about teachers’ listening that would reveal if and how teachers respect and understand the verbal communication of their students? Bullough’s framework could provide support for special education teacher educators to adopt this focus in their research.
Diversity of Methodology and Research Design
Our content analysis of TESE indicated most studies utilized quantitative designs, with less than 20% of the articles we reviewed using qualitative methods and an even smaller percentage utilizing mixed-methods designs. Yet qualitative and mixed-methods research designs offer the potential to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of pressing and persistent issues. In fact, the NASEM (2022) recommendations include explicit attention to qualitative and mixed-methods designs as one way to advance equity in education. The SEER standards on equity also explicitly recommend more mixed-methods research that incorporates qualitative designs (IES, 2022).
Beyond calls for more methodological diversity, research designs that share power and invite into partnership the voices, expertise, and personal experiences of research participants hold promise for advancing equity and social justice and address many of the SEER recommended practices. According to APA (2021), “Collaborative research models, such as participatory action research and community-based participatory research, promote the democratization of the research process and the equitable involvement of communities in their own research” (p. 9).
Such notions are reinforced in Beck’s (2020) espousal of third-space ideology and mixed methods in teacher education research. According to Beck, third-space research designs “value and integrate practitioner, scholarly, and community knowledge” (pp. 379–380), serving as a more democratic and equity-centered approach to research. These designs intentionally secure the participation of those who are often the subjects of education research including students, families, and teachers themselves. Third-space research designs enlist these individuals in the design and implementation of research, including identifying the problems most worthy of solving. For example, school district administrators could be consulted about research agendas that would address immediate challenges and bring to bear relevant and feasible solutions. In another example, teachers could be enlisted as co-investigators and co-authors on publications. In essence, research designs using third-space ideologies, participatory action research, community-based participatory research, and others, seek to not only inform research and practice but also transform it.
We return to our original question: How do we
Coda
Our editorship has been filled with many amazing opportunities to collaborate with one another, the Teacher Education Division (TED) of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), Sage Journals, and TESE reviewers, authors, and readers. To all these groups and individuals, we send our deepest thanks for supporting the journal and our work as editors. We also acknowledge and thank all the TESE editors who have preceded us. We strove to sustain their legacies of excellence.
We know the future is bright for TESE as we welcome the new editorial team, Drs. Elizabeth Bettini, LaRon Scott, and Wendy Rodgers. As leading scholars in the field of special education teacher education, themselves, we have no doubt that under their leadership, TESE will continue to advance the field by attempting to address pressing and persistent dilemmas and inequities using robust research approaches. We send them our best wishes for success. Serving TESE has been an honor and privilege—undoubtedly a highlight of our careers. For that, we are forever grateful.