Issues in the Professional Preparation of Secondary School Special Educators

The purpose of this study was to contrast university views with those of practitioners in defining professional preparation program efforts for secondary special educators. The impetus for the study was the paucity of secondary special education preparation programs (distinct from elementary, with clearly identifiable course patterns] in university catalog copy in the six states that comprise the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare's Region Five. Discrepancies were noted between administrators in local education agencies and those in universities on three issues: fa) the preparation of secondary special educators in language remediation, (b) the restructuring of the standard K-12 teaching certificate into a K-6 and 7–12 licensure, and (c) the identification of teaching competencies necessary to the successful implementation of mainstreaming.