Teacher-Handicapped Child Classroom Interactions

Abstract

Traditionally, teachers in preservice special education have been trained according to categories of exceptionality or handicapping condition. Advocates of an emerging noncategorical approach argue that (a ) categories are not educationally relevant, (b ) categorical groupings overlap with individual differences, and (c ) diagnostic labels can lead to negative and stereotypic perceptions of exceptional learners. The present study represents an effort to provide empirical data to clarify the relationship between teacher behavior and pupil categories of exceptionality. Two specific hypotheses were examined. First, is there a relationship between teacher-pupil interactions and category of exceptionality or type of teacher traininglexperience? Second, is there a relationship between teacher planning behavior and pupil categories of exceptionality or type of teacher training/ experience? Sixty-eight teachers of learning disabled/behavior disordered and mentally retarded pupils were observed during direct instruction and participated in structured interviews to answer the above questions. Results indicate that there are few differences in interactions between teachers of the learning disabled/behavior disordered and teachers of the mentally retarded and their pupils. Results also indicate that there are few differences between those two groups of teachers with respect to ways in which they plan for direct instruction. Findings of this study support the opinion that teacher competencies should relate directly to specific instructional problems rather than emphasize categorical labels or deficits attributed to child categories.