The Need for Braille Standards in University Preparation Programs

As we celebrate the bicentennial of Louis Braille's birth, it is appropriate to reflect on the level of braille skills that new professionals entering the field have acquired in their personnel preparation programs. For decades, university programs that prepare teachers to work with children or adults who are visually impaired have included courses in braille reading and writing. There have been many articles published about braille in general over the decades, but there have been very few that specifically addressed what aspects of braille preservice educators should learn and how they should learn them. Spungin (1975) developed general guidelines and performance indicators for the braille skills of preservice teachers, but the guidelines did not include specific standards for how performance should be measured. Another, more recent, document used by the field of visual impairment and blindness, Education Service Guidelines (Pugh & Erin, 1999), also lists a large number (20, in fact) of competencies related to braille needed by teachers of children who are blind, but it does not offer any guidance as to how proficient teachers need to be in those areas. TEACHING BRAILLE TO TEACHERS Although there is widespread consensus that braille is a critical skill for prospective teachers to learn if they plan to work with people with visual disabilities, there are a variety of methods by which the literary braille code is taught to preservice teachers. University programs offer literary braille instruction in several ways: a single stand-alone online or face-to-face course, a series of courses spread over several semesters or quarters, a course that combines braille instruction with general literacy strategies (that is, how to teach braille reading and writing), or a course that also provides instruction in the Nemeth Braille Code for Mathematics and other braille codes. These differences in approach to braille instruction by university programs are often related to an individual state's unique guidelines for teacher certification, a university' s particular requirements for its teacher preparation program, the challenges of scheduling, and other factors. Although the methods of training teachers of students with visual impairments differ from university to university, the goal of braille instruction in such programs is to create beginning teachers who are knowledgeable in the literary braille code and can read and produce braille accurately (Amato, 2002). To date, however, the field of visual impairment has not developed clear standards for what a competent beginning teacher of students with visual impairments should know about braille, and how that competence should be demonstrated. Amato (2002) surveyed university teacher-training programs regarding their braille instruction; she compared their requirements and braille formats taught, grading policies, criteria for passing, and topics covered. Amato's study found: "... there is widespread diversity and a lack of consistency in university-level braille courses with respect to the format of instruction, content and instructional materials, expected student outcomes, and standards and criteria for competence in braille literacy. There appears to be no consistent standard for training teachers of students who are visually impaired in braille" (p. 149). CREATING COMPETENCIES A field-wide initiative was responsible for the development of a National Literary Braille Competency Test (NLBCT) in the 1990s. This tool was designed to assess skills in reading and writing braille. Although NLBCT was field-tested, it was never validated; in fact, the validation process was compromised when incorrect versions of the test were used (Pierce, 2006). There were already concerns about the content reliability of the test before the validation process derailed (Allman & Lewis, 1996), and some researchers felt the test was not an appropriate assessment for use in teacher certification (one intended use of the test). …