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Abstract

Teachers represent the largest school impact on student learning, yet the national professional teacher workforce has been described as inadequately prepared to meet the academic, linguistic, social, and other educational needs of the majority of the nation’s public school student population. Moreover, youngsters from diverse linguistic, cultural, and ability backgrounds continue to be overrepresented in specialized school settings. These interrelated phenomena are influenced by multiple complex sociocultural and other factors (i.e., historical, economic, political). Among these are reported steady growth in the population and enrollment of students from non-English speaking, diverse cultural backgrounds in the nation’s public schools, perennial low representation of teachers who are themselves members of diverse cultural backgrounds, and teachers who are competent in the languages spoken by the students assigned to their classrooms. These conditions represent significant challenges for all students, but especially those who, in addition to language or cultural differences, experience unique learning or social challenges as a function of disability conditions. Researchers have consistently emphasized the need for children who are English Language Learners and those who have disabilities to be taught by teachers who are knowledgeable about and competent in the critical bilingual and special education pedagogies identified by the professions. This study examined the current state of bilingual special education teacher preparation programs and their inclusion of components identified as critical to these teachers’ professional competence. Findings suggest that the integrated model of bilingual and special education teacher preparation is the most frequently used model. Implications and future research directions were also presented.

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