A Promising Practice: Low Incidence Teacher Education in Rural and Remote California

Rural Special Education Quarterly, Summer 2005 by Larwood, Lou

In contrast, the visibility of the SJSU Program in the San Francisco Bay area has been well established over a period of several years. Since the development of the distance learning option, visibility and systematic contacts with rural school agencies are becoming more cyclical as their teachers matriculate through the credential program.

Support for teachers. Mentors for distance learners must be aware of the unique challenges of understanding and supporting new teachers of the deaf who educate a deaf child in remote areas. The Program Director works closely with the teacher candidates' employers to assign a mentor who is already working in the same program or a person who works in a similar job capacity in an adjacent county or state. If a mentor cannot be found locally, a 'cyber mentor' is assigned. In contrast, the campus-based teacher candidates are hired in urban programs where mentors are easily accessible and work in the same program and often at the same school site. The SJSU Deaf Education Program provides mentor training and stipends as an incentive to maintain a high caliber of mentors for teacher candidates.

Development of Technology Skills for Distance Learning

Larwood (in press) examined the readiness skills for accessing technology for distance learning. The technology most frequently used by the distance learners was word processing, electronic bulletin boards and email. In the same study, distance teacher candidates had the least amount of skill in using databases, spreadsheets, and online library resources and in accessing class WebPages, which are crucial for distance learning. The technology most frequently used by the campus-based teacher candidates was word processing, email, databases and spreadsheets. Campus based students had the least amount of skill in using electronic bulletin boards and online library resources and in accessing class WebPages. Larwood's study (in press) provided an important opportunity for the SJSU Deaf Education Credential Program to redesign required campus-based courses to include technology skill-building in all required assignments within the credential courses so that all teacher candidates, distance and campus-based teacher candidates would benefit from the work assigned. An example of a modified assignment was the inclusion of the computer application of BlackBoard.com as a means to access assignments and grades. Another example of a modification was the development of an online discussion board using a WebCT application for the class. This allowed distance teacher candidates to participate in topical discussions on a weekly basis. As a result of this modification, 80 percent of the Department of Special Education courses now include participation in online discussion boards in several course expectations/requirements.

Presently, there are eight required deaf education courses, six special education core classes as well as two Masters Degree courses that have been revised to include: use of online resources (libraries), electronic bulletin boards, use of program web site to obtain assignments and syllabi, development of multimedia projects and presentations, required skill building for obtaining information from data bases, classroom discussion boards and data spreadsheets. All courses include a required technology research campus-based inservice provided by the campus library faculty to ensure that all students in the program have equal access to current research and know how to access articles for developing their own research agendas within courses as well as the Masters Degree Program in Special Education. All distance teacher candidates are required to attend this campus-based event. All courses require students to own a laptop or personal computer. All teacher candidates enrolled in teacher preparation programs must contend with requisite technology skills, distance learners have expressed relief when they have been provided the opportunity to expand their technology repertoire course assignments.