Michael Gottfried, associate professor in the Department of Education at UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School—along with co-presenter Assistant Professor Ethan Hutt from the University of Maryland—will co-lead the special workshop “Are Teachers Prepared to Teach Students with Learning Disabilities?” on Thursday, December 6 at 3 pm at UC Center Sacramento. Margarita Jimenez-Silva, an Associate Professor and director of teacher education at the School of Education in University of California, Davis, will be the discussant.
Including students with learning disabilities (SWLDs) in general education classrooms is a statewide priority. Consequently, now more than ever, California's teacher education programs face increased responsibility to ensure newly-graduating general education teachers receive adequate preparation to educate SWLDs. Little has been established about whether this is the case. Gottfried and Hutt explored this issue by surveying all graduating teachers from the 17-18 class, across all of the UC schools. They investigated how qualities of teacher preparation programs related to teacher graduates’ perceptions of their preparation to educate SWLDs. Graduates reported feeling more prepared for disability policies if they believed their program was cohesive in its goals and expectations. The results were mainly driven by elementary school teacher graduates rather than secondary school teacher graduates. They will also discuss policy implications.
Michael Gottfried’s research focuses on absenteeism, schooling context, and STEM with an interest in disabilities running through all of these areas. He has served as PI on grants focusing on schooling context and outcomes specifically for elementary school students (NSF, AERA/NSF, NIH/NICHD R03, Foundation for Child Development, Stuart Foundation, Spencer Foundation). He has published work in the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Teachers College Record, Education Finance and Policy, American Journal of Education, Elementary School Journal, among others. In 2016, he released a co-edited book on educational policy with Harvard Education Press. Michael is on the Editorial Board of American Educational Research Journal and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. He holds a PhD and MA in Applied Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in Economics from Stanford University.
Ethan Hutt is an Assistant Professor of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research focuses on the historical relationship between quantification, education policy, and the law. In particular, Hutt’s work focuses on the numbers and metrics that are used to describe, define, and regulate American school systems and asks: Where did these numbers—whether grades, test scores, value-added measures—come from? How did they become central to the work of schools? How did they gain and maintain their legitimacy? What effects have they had for how we think about what schools can (and should) do? In pursuing these questions Hutt’s research has explored the history of the GED, grading practices, standardized test use, value-added measures, and longitudinal datasets. His work has been published in a wide variety of venues including Social Science History, Teachers College Record, Teaching and Teacher Education, and the Virginia Law Review. Hutt was the second speaker in the Gevirtz School’s Policy Goes to School lecture series in January 2017.
The University of California Center Sacramento advances the University’s mission of teaching, research and public service with an integrated program to train future state leaders, to address challenging public-policy issues confronted by the nation and state, and to carry out the University’s mandate to assist state government.