Riding fences

Rural Special Education Quarterly, Fall 2002 by Ludlow, Barbara

Personnel preparation, at both preservice and inservice levels, not only is a critical component of special education and disability services, but also presents us with some of the most pressing issues in the field. Unfortunately, programs that prepare special educators and related services specialists at colleges and universities across the country too often receive little support and less credit for their efforts to insure an adequate number of appropriately trained personnel. The importance of this contribution is nowhere more critical than in rural areas, where the supply of new teachers is often inadequate to meet the demand, many teachers and therapists work without initial training or full qualifications, and high attrition rates create constant turnover in many positions.

In this issue, we explore some of the latest developments in personnel preparation in rural areas, especially the growing role that technology plays in program delivery. The first article presents a national study conducted by Jane Williams, Suzanne Martin, and Robert Hess, that asked ACRES members to identify current challenges and potential solutions to preparing personnel for rural areas. Survey respondents recommended more attractive incentive systems, better professional development opportunities, and wider use of distance education models. Jennifer Grisham-Brown and Belva Collins report a study that evaluated the impact of a distance education program at the University of Kentucky that used satellite and interactive video technologies to train rural special educators. They found that the program not only succeeded in helping trainees develop critical skills, but also resulted in systemic changes in practices and programs in the schools in which they worked. An innovative use of video portfolios in the context of another distance education program that prepares teachers to work with students who have autism, this time at the University of Wyoming, is the focus of the next article by Gail Zahn and Michelle Buchanan. They describe how video portfolios are used to document teacher acquisition of new skills as well as to demonstrate their application in rural classrooms. To close this issue, I provide a set of 21 suggested steps to help beginning and novice writers be more successful in getting their work published in RSEQ and other journals. This article summarizes the mentoring session for prospective authors held each year at the ACRES annual conference and meeting.

A joint position paper was issued recently by the Higher Education Consortium for Special Education (HECSE), an association of doctoral degree granting institutions, and the Teacher Education Division (TED) of the Council for Exceptional Children, a group that represents faculty who work in colleges and universities that prepare special education and related services personnel. This paper compares the special education enterprise to a four-legged stool, supported by policymakers, families, schools, and colleges/universities, and argues that we must work together to insure four strong legs if we want to keep the stool standing. We dedicate this issue to that goal and salute the efforts of all institutions of higher education that work to prepare personnel in rural areas.

Barbara Ludlow

Executive Editor

Rural Special Education Quarterly