Honors Program
Midway Honors
Date of Award
5-2020
Thesis Professor(s)
Pam Mims
Thesis Professor Department
Curriculum and Instruction
Abstract
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has played a critical role in providing educational opportunity to students with disabilities. As the principles of the IDEA are foundational to teaching students with disabilities, it is necessary that both general education and special education teachers have an understanding of special education policy. This study examines teacher candidates’ knowledge of special education policy and their attitudes and perceptions of special education. The survey was distributed to teacher candidates in their final year of their teacher preparation program at a public university in the Southeast. Results indicated that teacher candidates in all teaching areas lacked knowledge of special education law. A difference was seen in the knowledge of special education and general education teacher candidates, as special education candidates had significantly higher knowledge. Teacher candidates who had higher perceived levels of knowledge also had higher actual knowledge, and candidates with lower perception also had lower knowledge. Implications of these results for educator preparation programs and current teachers are discussed.
Publisher
East Tennessee State University
Document Type
Honors Thesis - Open Access
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Spann, Emilee, "An Exploratory Survey of Teacher Candidate Knowledge of Special Education" (2020). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 551. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/551
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.