EDUC 334 - Introduction to Special Education

3 credits
3 hours per week.

This course is designed to ensure that pre-service teachers explore alternative ways of viewing, understanding and teaching the exceptional child. While this course emphasizes the cognitive and behavioral characteristics of students who are exceptional with respect to mental abilities, it addresses, also, the characteristics of students exhibiting physical and emotional exceptionalities. Relevant research findings generated by investigators from appropriate fields of inquiry undergird this course. Ethical, legal, political, moral and educational policy constraints that impact the way in which school personnel are able to interact with students exhibiting exceptionalities are addressed. Procedures for ensuring that pre-service teachers acquire strategies for developing State and National Assessment competencies in their students are emphasized. Observation in an elementary or a secondary school provides an opportunity for the pre-service teacher to ground a required research activity in a naturalistic setting.

Prerequisite(s) EDUC 200