Tuesday, May 1, 2007
General Education
I am wondering why general ed teachers are not taught about applied behavior analysis. I happen to know they are not because I have a general ed credential. I think there may have been a lecture about postive reinforcement but, that was not the focus of our ed psych class. As far as classroom management it was all about having consequences (not consequences like we talk about, consequences meaning a nice word for punishment). If this is the best way to deal with problem behaviors, why aren't gen ed teachers taught about it? General ed teachers have plenty of students with problem behaviors and general ed teachers teach lots of students in special ed.
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3 comments:
Tonette,
I must say I relate to your concerns about the lack of behavior analysis training that exists for general educators. In my case, and I am sure for many others, this particularly becomes an issue when working with included students. For instance, when my student has a meltdown and refuses to do work, the gen ed teacher sees it as the student having a “bad day.” But when the behavior is given operational definitions and functional analysis, it becomes clear that when my student is not understanding the material, he will act out and when understanding material will stay under control. The general ed teacher goes on to tell me my student doesn’t have to “get it” i.e. learn. Of course according to my sped superiors, my student’s goal, like the other kids in class, is academic based. I feel that if we intend to move to a more inclusive environment interacting with more and more general education teachers, these conflicts will exist until better training for gened teachers is required.
I guess I want to defend the general education teachers to some degree. It does depend where the teachers go to earn their teaching credential whether or not they will receive training in ABA. I have know some teachers that do apply ABA in their classrooms. I was a general education teacher and used ABA to help find solutions for problem behaviors in my classroom.
I also thing that there is a great deal for the general education teachers to learn in the ways of curriculum, classroom management, class and student assessment, and many other things. In fact to look at education on the whole from the general education teacher's perspective they often have many frustrations with some of us in special education because of our lack of training in curriculum and understanding of how we can hurt their classroom with the constant interruptions of pull-outs and assessing.
I think what we need to do is come together as professionals and help one another improve our repertoire of tools as teachers whether we need to learn ABA or attain a deeper knowledge of the curriculum.
There are many tools out there that teach some ABA management strategy programs that general education teachers can use to help manage student behavior, e.g. the fast program. Also, I had a really wonderful opportunity where I previously worked during our professional development meetings. Each teacher would either be asked or choose something to present on that would be useful knowledge for the other teachers. The staff I worked with also took this very seriously and we all learned a great deal from one another.
I complete agree that general ed teachers have a lack of education and training in the field of behavior analysis. In fact, I changed my major during undergrad from Liberal Studies to Child Development just for reasons similiar to this. I felt that I would have a better understanding of the students I am going to work with if I knew how they were developing and progressing. Rather than what bits a pieces of knowledge I gained from just learning about subject content. Don't get me wrong I completely agree that there are good general ed teachers out there, however, I really think that, like Tonette said, since they work with students who have special needs, they need to be trained as well. And not only for the students in special education, but to benefit them in their classroom as well.
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