When legislation precedes the state of the art in teacher training

Abstract

Passage of Public Law 94-142, the Education for all Handicapped Children Act requires the development of an Individualized Education Program (IEP) for each handicapped child served. While administration are inclined to view the IEP as a document intended to monitor the provision of special services, teachers focused on the potential instructional value of the IEP. Professionals agree that this has been one of the most difficult components of the law to implement. Policymakers designing the law posited that training technology was adequate to support the instructional requirements outlined in the legislation. The present study challenges that assumption. It is also argued that studies which attempt to integrate multiple operations to clarify findings can provide more accurate and consequently more useful data of critical value in the beginning stages of policy formation. The multiple data collection strategies employed in this study yielded increasingly specific information on the status of present training technology--particularly in relation to teacher skills related to the instructional aspects of the IEP planning process. Teacher perceptions of their training needs were compared with actual skill performances on selected IEP tasks. Data reveal the inadequacy of essential skills in formulating required goal and objective statements. Special education and regular classroom teachers show similar patterns in specific skills which are problematic. Statements from teacher interviews corroborated deficits in past training. Suggestions for future training are offered as are emphases for needed research. Implications for implementation of the IEP are also discussed.