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NCAC: Research & Solutions: Teacher Practice

Teacher Practice

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Teaching is an increasingly challenging and personally rewarding profession. Engaging students with disabilities in classroom instruction requires careful attention to planning for individual needs, making decisions about materials and activities, selecting fair and equitable assessments, accommodating for students' differences, modifying curriculum goals and collaborating with families and other school personnel.

When we refer to the ways in which these activities are carried out, reflected upon and refined as Teaching Practices a number of issues are raised:

• Why has emphasis shifted from merely meeting developmental need to accessing the general curriculum for students with disabilities?
• How can teachers transform their tried and true practices to improve results for all learners, including students with disabilities?
• How can teachers work together to plan and implement instruction that engages all students?
• What does the research literature say about the obstacles teachers confront as they try to reach every child?
• What does the literature say about effective teaching practices in a climate of challenge and change?

The Teaching Practices Group at the National Center has been examining these issues through literature searches, close collaboration with the Curriculum Group at CAST and through field observations in urban and suburban schools.

The work of the Teaching Practices Group at the Boston College Lynch School of Education is presented in two reports:

Review of Recent Literature

Effective Teaching Practices and the Barriers Limiting Their Use in Accessing the Curriculum: A Review of Recent Literature

This report summarizes the results of a review of recent literature concerning barriers limiting access to the general curriculum and teaching practices that hold particular promise for eliminating or reducing them.

Teacher Planning and Universal Design for Learning

Teacher Planning and the Universal Design for Learning Environments

This report addresses one of the most difficult challenges for teachers: meeting the needs of every student in today's diverse classrooms. After describing the progression in special education from an emphasis on meeting developmental and disability-specific needs to an emphasis on access to the general curriculum, the report argues the utility of collaborative teaching approaches grounded within the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework for enabling this access.