What Do We Know About Effective Teaching and Teacher Education for Teachers Working with Students with Disabilities?

Effective teachers are essential to designing, implementing and evaluating successful instruction for students with disabilities. This chapter describes the dimensions of expert teachers for students with high incidence disabilities and the research supporting those dimensions. How a practice-based approach to teacher education, and strategies that support it, can be used to support teachers’ development towards expert performance are then descrived. The disruptive role that teacher shortages play in implementing practice-based approaches to teacher education and propose apprecentiships as a viable option for supporting teachers entering classrooms from non traditional preparaiton routes are described. The chapter concludes with discussion of directions for future research and implementation of practice-based approaches to teacher education.