Teachers' Perceptions of Professional Standards: Their Importance and Ease of Implementation

Abstract

Accreditation of teacher education programs by professional organizations, such as National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE)/Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), was developed to meet two key goals: (a) to monitor teacher accountability for student learning, and (b) to monitor the quality of teacher preparation among institutions of higher education. Accreditation has been controversial from its inception through to present day. Among the consistent criticisms of education accreditation systems is the fact that there is limited empirical evidence to support the stated professional standards, such as those required by NCATE/CEC. It is surprising that there is little empirical evidence documenting the validation of professional standards, even by professional classroom educators. In the present study the authors explored a pilot study of the perspectives of special educators regarding both the importance and ease of implementation of the CEC/NCATE Professional Standards. The authors presented each standard in 2 Likert scales: one on which the rater assigned a rating of importance of the standard and another on which the rater chose a rating of the ease of implementation of the standard. Results indicated that although many teachers found the NCATE/CEC Professional Standards to be of high importance, they found many standards difficult to implement.

Keywords:

• professional standards
• special education standards
• teacher education