Kim Calder Stegemann

Our project offered general and special education teachers guided and sustained opportunities to design and implement assessments of young children's reading and writing that reflect contemporary approaches to literacy instruction. Fourteen teachers met 10 times over 15 months (April 1997-June 1998) to critically examine their current assessment practices, and to consider and design alternatives that they experimented with in their classrooms between meetings. This paper describes teachers' perceptions of the efficacy of our participatory approach to professional development, their learning, and changes in their assessment practices that reflect their learning. Overall, teachers valued opportunities to learn from one another, to set their own professional development agenda, and having time to plan, experiment, and reflect on their assessment practices. Teachers produced high quality assessments to reflect their teaching-learning contexts, and gained confidence in their abil...

I am always attempting to develop new and better ways to teach beginning teachers “all there is to know ” about child develop-ment and special education. Over the years this process has lead me to feel more and more disillusioned. I am convinced that we need a total revamp of how we approach teaching educational psychology and pro-pose that our discipline re-define what is considered to be essential knowledge and skills for teachers in the twenty-first cen-tury. I begin my argument with a review of typical educational psychology courses in initial teacher education, and what my experience with content and process has been over the past 19 years of my career. I then outline the basic tenets of twenty-first century learning and compare these to a “typical ” introductory course in educa-tional psychology. Finally, I suggest possi-ble alternatives to the current curriculum and pedagogy of educational psychology in order for it to align with the principles of twenty-first century learning.

Some believe that Canada is a forerunner in ensuring the rights of the disabled and in fostering an inclusive society. The opportunity exists to also be a leader in teacher education which is essential to the success of the inclusion process. Such leadership, however, will require fundamental changes in teacher education practices for both pre- and in-service teachers, as well as systematic reforms to government policy and school structures. In this paper I propose a number of changes to teacher education. To begin, I briefly outline the current policies and practices of inclusive education within the context of social justice and diverse culture. Next, I present a review of parents, teacher, and administrator perspectives on inclusion which will serve to inform the proposals which I present later in the paper. In order for Canada to be considered a leader in educational inclusion some fundamental changes are necessary to teacher education, schools and education systems, which I out...

Educational inclusion of children with special learning needs is a philosophy and movement with an international presence. Though Canada is a leader in educational inclusion, many would claim that our public educational systems have not yet fully realized the dream of inclusive education. As other countries have noted, making full-fl edged changes in systems can be diffi cult without a strategic plan of action that clearly articulates the stages of implementation, and without an agreed upon framework for planning, putting into action, and measuring the success. In this paper, we introduce the logic model framework for describing the process of creating inclusive educational environments. Logic models focus on implementation of a program, from start to end, making explicit the key assumptions on which the process is based, and help to identify where implementation may be breaking down. We create a generic logic model for the implementation of inclusive education, based on the documen...

This single-case study examined the effects of a graphic organizing strategy on the ability of children to improve their text comprehension abilities. Participants were six students between ten and fourteen years old with major problems in understanding what they read. The intervention intended to teach them to visually highlight key elements of a passage, and thus, to deepen their understanding of it (story mapping). An AB multiple baseline design across subjects was applied. The intervention points were randomly determined within a preset range for each participant. In accordance with the emerging trend to apply inferential statistics as a supplement to visual inspection and the calculation of effect size measures, a randomization test and a piecewise regression procedure were used to analyze the data. Results suggested that the story mapping technique was very benefi cial in improving reading comprehension of struggling learners. The potentials of the intervention as well as of t...

While Canada was the first country to ensure the rights of the disabled with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982), and the benefits have been clearly identified, inclusion practices continue to be haphazard and adoption slow. There are numerous reasons for the slower than expected implementation of inclusion across Canada, among these is the attitude and skills of teachers, para-professionals, and parents, funding for support staff and teacher training, school leadership, and physical and material resources. This research study will examine inclusion of children with disabilities in general education classrooms within a British Columbian school district with both rural and urban schools. The Kamloops/Thompson School District (KTSD) has approximately 15,000 students in 43 schools, some with segregated educational settings. We seek to identify broad themes in the views of parents, student, and educators related to inclusive education, and examine and explain any differen...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a simple technique (Count-Bys) to enhance multiplication facts fluency in struggling learners. A single-case multiple baseline design across three fact sets was applied. The subject was a 12-year old boy with mild cognitive delays, who demonstrated adequate addition skills, but was mostly unable to perform multiplications. At the end of about two weeks of practicing the Count-By strategy with three fact sets, the boy had reached mastery as measured by the number of accurately written digits within five minutes in response to a worksheet containing 30 multiplication problems. Follow-up data taken during a period of two weeks upon termination of the intervention indicated that the student nearly maintained mastery levels across all fact sets. The benefits of using Count-Bys in a peer tutorial setting in order to enlarge teacher‘s opportunities to attend to the needs of all students in the classroom were discussed.

The study of dispositions for effective teaching has become a
key topic in education. Diverse characteristics, skills, and behaviors have been proposed as centrally important. Nevertheless, little work has been done on evaluating these disparate claims, or whether importance varies across primary and secondary teaching contexts. We address these issues by using a new instrument that incorporated a wide range and a large number of individual dispositions with an established methodology (the Q-sort; Block, 2008) that allows dispositions to be meaningfully ranked by importance and then compared across
grade level. A diverse group of experienced teachers were
consistent in their rankings, and their judgments showed
both similarities and differences across grade level. We discuss
theoretical and practical implications.

The status of learning disabilities within Canadian public schools and the wider population is both optimistic and, at the same time, worthy of great concern. Each individual province and territory in Canada is responsible for its own public education systems, leading to inconsistencies in definition, identification practices, funding for support, and interven-tion/support services. The changes to the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria have led to even more confusion and concern, particularly among Canadian educational leaders in the field of learning disabilities. The consequences of not addressing learning disabilities can be devastating. Despite these challenges, some innovative practices are being launched in identification (neurobiological) and intervention (universal design for learning and response to intervention frameworks) that hold great promise for children and youth with learning disabilities in Canada.

Traditionally admissions is a screen to select the best people for a particular TE program Screen mechanisms vary from institution to institution but have common elements We argue this is hurting TE in two ways: Disposition/Grades is priority with little attention paid to conceptions of discipline and learning Admissions data is filed away and is not being used to modify the pedagogy of the program to suit the prior learning of its teacher candidates Thus, we have changed the admissions process at UNB to address these two deficiencies by changing what information is collected and then what is done with the information after it is collected

Every year the teacher education program at Thompson Rivers University deals with Teacher Candidates who are unsuccessful in their final school practicum. To tease out potential factors of success and failure, we have collected and analyzed scores on the four intake components: incoming Grade Point Average (GPA), Letter of Intent, Writing Sample, and Interview. Through statistical analyses, we have determined a number of significant relationships, among these being a connection between intake interview scores and success on the practicum. These findings have influenced our intake procedures and methods of mentoring, scaffolding, and supporting our Teacher Candidates throughout our 2-year Bachelor of Education program.

Number sense is critical to the development of higher order mathematic abilities. However, some children have difficulty acquiring these fundamental skills and the knowledge base of effective interventions/remediation is relatively limited. Based on emerging neuro-scientific research which has identified the association between finger movement/representation and numerical cognition, this one-year study examined the effectiveness of a finger calculation program for at-risk and non-at-risk school children. Specifically, the study sought to determine the impact of learning Chisanbop (Korean finger calculation method) on the number sense, computational, quantitative concepts, and problem solving skills, as well as attitudes towards mathematics, of children at the grade 2 and grade 5 levels. The findings indicate a significant impact on attitudes for math for at-risk grade 2 students.

I have just completed another degree to round out my skills in psychotherapy. The masters degree in counselling psychology will allow me to effectively combine psychotherapy, neurofeedback, and education to help children, teens, an adults to improve performance and well-being.

Taking a bio-psycho-social approach, I will work with clients who have anxiety, ADHD, depression, PTSD, and learning disabilities.

Inclusive education is both an ideal and a process, and is consistent with the Canadian imperative of a multicultural and pluralistic society. Realizing this vision, however, is less straightforward.  This text is intended to highlight how inclusion is operationalized for students with various learning needs in different educational jurisdictions across Canada.  Much has been written about the problems and challenges associated with inclusive education, but this text will take a different perspective. Rather than focusing on what is not working, each case study in this text will highlight how each member of the educational team works together to create a successful inclusive experience. All of the cases are of "real" students, families, administrators, and educators. As such, none are perfect examples of inclusive education. These cases do, however, demonstrate the types of beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, and skills that are required in order to optimize the learning experiences of all children, and in particular those with unique learning needs.