Candidates are trained to teach all levels of students K-12. Candidates meet with and collaborate with general educators, special educators, other education personnel, other related agency personnel and families to design and develop strategies to ensure the least restrictive placement in the student s home-school district. The content of the courses are very similar, yet the focus is specific to the conditions children and adults in these categories will need. This curriculum is designed to build from the broad background in the physiological, environmental and social aspects of exceptionality that the candidates developed during the prerequisite and core courses. It also provides the candidate with the opportunity to develop skills for managing environmental situations to bring about change and assist exceptional persons to be responsible for their own choices and development.
Candidates learn to use assessment data as a tool for effective instruction.
The candidates are provided with many examples of how assessment is used to design curriculum and instruction. Candidates are taught to adjust instruction through effective plan, design, and implementation which enhances and supports diversity, culture, and ethnicity. Sometimes this requires the candidate to extract a sequence from instructional material and develop sequences for learner understanding. This may mean designing, modifying, supplementing, or adapting instructional sequences. Candidates write observable, measurable objectives as the basis for determining whether learning is occurring and match components of the structure of the lesson to the specific objective the students are to achieve within the lesson.