The Development of Accepted Performance Items to Demonstrate Braille Competence in the Nemeth Code for Mathematics and Science Notation.

The purpose of standards and competencies in personnel preparation is to ensure that educators from different institutions are given approximately the same training. Although the early standards and competencies focused primarily on general education, there was a movement in the 1950s, spearheaded by the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC, 1966), to develop professional standards in special education. The American Foundation for the Blind led the efforts to establish more specialized competencies for teachers of students with visual impairments, and Spungin's work (1977) became the framework of competencies used by teacher preparation programs. Since the 1970s, CEC has redeveloped its standards to include sets of knowledge and skills for each exceptionality (CEC, 2003). The CEC Division on Visual Impairments, with the support of the Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired (AER), was responsible for developing the statements on knowledge and skills that are currently used in the preparation of teachers of students with visual impairments (Hatlen, 2000). Within the field of special education for students with visual impairments, there has been a recent movement to standardize the preparation of students with visual impairments by developing "microstandards" that focus on the minute knowledge and skills that are needed by teachers of students with visual impairments. For example, Smith, Kelley, Maushak, Griffin-Shirley, and Lan (2009) developed an exhaustive set of competencies in assistive technology (along with levels of proficiency) for teachers of students with visual impairments. Fueled by the findings by Amato (2002) and Rosenblum, Lewis, and D'Andrea (2010) of the lack of consistency in preparation in literacy braille, Lewis, D'Andrea, and Rosenblum (2012) recommended literary braille competencies. It remains to be seen whether these competencies will be enacted by AER's Personnel Preparation Division as standards that personnel preparation programs will use in designing their courses for preservice teachers of students with visual impairments and certified vision rehabilitation therapists. A review of the literature found that teachers of students with visual impairments are concerned about their training and level of proficiency in the Nemeth Code for Mathematics and Science Notation (hereafter, Nemeth code). In a Delphi study, Koenig and Holbrook (2000) found that skills in the area of the Nemeth code were rated as important. Kapperman and Sticken (2003), however, stated that most teachers of students with visual impairments often do not have the skills to teach the Nemeth code. A survey of 135 teachers of students with visual impairments, by Rosenblum and Amato (2004), found that only 28.9% of the respondents believed that their university preparation programs provided almost all the information they needed to do their jobs. Conversely, 34.4% stated that their preservice training in the Nemeth code was rudimentary and that they had to learn most of what they needed in order to perform their job themselves. We hope that by providing more discrete competencies and levels of proficiency for the Nemeth code, as developed in the study presented here, university personnel preparation programs will have a direct guide to develop courses in which their students will proficiently learn to read and write the Nemeth code. For the purposes of the study, standards and competencies had to be defined. Klein and Richey (2007) defined standards as the combination of current practice, shared ethics and values, and the profession's vision for the future. Standards are the basis for the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed within a specific profession. Competencies are defined as "a knowledge, skill, or attitude that enables one to effectively perform the activities of a given occupation or function to the standards expected in employment" (Houston, 1975, p. 7). …