Personal Philosophy Paper Special Education

Required Components

Hints

(Also remember to check the rubric and other help materials for additional guidance)

Target

(40 points)

Response is well written (e.g., academic tone, proper grammar, spelling, punctuation and conforms to formatting specified in syllabus).

If you are unsure what academic tone means, look at any professional journal. The writing is objective except where opinion is called for and is free of jargon, popular sayings, emotional statements and unprofessional language. Example: CORRECT: “The students demonstrated low comprehension of basic math facts.” INCORRECT: “The students were totally lost when it came to math.”

(8 points available)

Description of the type of students I desire to teach at this point in training (age/level, disability) and rationale for choosing this population.

If you don’t plan to teach special education, you can tailor this to your career goals. Since this is a class about students with disabilities, however, you must address those students and you must choose one of the disabilities covered in the Heward text, with the exception of giftedness/talent (not considered a disability under federal law). Example: If you are a general educator, talk about how you plan to serve students with a specific disability in your classroom. If you are on the speech-language track, you should address strategies for communication disorders.

(4 points available)

Description of 2 proven effective instructional strategies that will be used with these students. Make sure to:

· fully describe each strategy and provide an example of classroom use of the strategy

· describe how each strategy addresses a specific need of the chosen population

· provide scientific evidence of each strategy’s effectiveness with the target population

· provide proper APA citation for each strategy

This is the most important part of your paper, so make sure to cover each of the competencies. Discuss each strategy in a separate paragraph, providing all the required details. Remember to include the results of the study that confirmed effectiveness by presenting numerical data. Avoid broad statements like “The study indicated that this strategy was effective.” Instead, use statements like, “This strategy was effective for 82% of the fifth graders who participated. Improvements included increases in reading comprehension of .5 to 2.5 grade levels.” An instructional strategy is a discrete technique. A few examples are: using white boards to increase student responses, community based instruction, choral responding. Heward has many, but you’ll need to find the primary research study that proves the strategy was effective (See Heward’s references). Use professional journals accessed through ODU’s library database to find research-based instructional strategies. The following are TOO broad to be instructional strategies: inclusion, collaboration, and behavior management. Rule of thumb: if there is an entire class devoted to it and/or you can’t implement it on your own (e.g., schoolwide positive behavioral support, curricula like Wilson Reading), it is too broad to be an instructional strategy.

(12 points available )

Description of 2 extended professional teaching skills that you desire to develop/refine and a plan(s) of action that describes how you will obtain the specified professional teaching skills.

Extended professional skills are those that reach beyond the skills and competencies required for licensure. In this section, you need to indicate 2 skills that you will acquire to increase your professional expertise. A few examples are: becoming certified in applied behavior analysis, taking a workshop on using PowerPoint for student presentations, attending a conference on methods for teaching science, and learning to use a piece of assistive technology. Nonexamples are: anything required for licensure: classroom management, behavior management, teaching reading, etc. Do not propose anything that there is not a known way to acquire, for example, patience. Please link your skills to your choice of population as well.

(4 points available)

Statement of personal philosophy of general or special education.

A statement of your personal philosophy of general or special education, including a reflection on serving diverse populations. Please see the prologue (p. 2) & postscript (p. 559) of the Heward textbook for suggestions on developing a personal philosophy of special education. You are welcome to cite supporting research to support your opinion.

(4 points available )

References on reference page are formatted in APA style according to Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th edition only).

In-text reference citations are formatted in APA style according to Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th edition only).

I’ve provided a number of sources for this information, but the authoritative source is the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). As you can tell by the number of points, this is an important skill to master. All remaining classes in this program will expect correct APA style. Neither a title page nor a running head are required, only correct parenthetical citations and reference list. Subheadings are not graded, but highly recommended to help you structure your paper.

(8 points available)