Post Doctoral Fellowship at the Juniper Gardens Children's Project: Developing Research Leadership in Special Education

Abstract

From 1983 to the present, 30 post-doctoral Fellows have spent at least one year at the Juniper Gardens Children's Project developing their own research plans, programs, and skills in research. Forty percent of these fellows were members of minority groups, 70% were female, and 1 had a disability demonstrating impact with traditionally underrepresented groups. The fellows received stipends, materials, and training provided by three leadership training grants from the Division of Personnel Preparation, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services. The program is guided by the philosophy that research leadership is a function of one's own active research program and that the traditional research experiences leading to the Ph.D. in special education are often insufficient to establish a research career. Building upon this philosophy, are a number of programmatic themes: (1) minorities, minority issues, and urban schooling; (2) ecological (environmental) and behavioral assessment and analysis; (3) instructional and behavioral intervention; (4) research to practice; (5) technology applications to research and instruction/intervention; (6) current issues in special education; (7) project/proposal development; and (8) participation in ongoing research projects. The goals and experiences provided each Fellow in the program are individually tailored in an Individual Fellowship Program (IFP) providing the opportunities and the skills necessary to advance their own research career. Fellow's accomplishments and products during and after their post-doctoral training (e.g., research positions held, research and training grants obtained, publications in professional journals, participation in research, etc.), indicate substantial increases in their professional research activities and its impact on the work of others in the field (e.g., Social Science Citation Index). Implications of this type of post-doctoral training for promoting needed leadership in special education now and in the future are discussed.