Accepted Papers from TCEA Symposium 2008

Denise N.J. Chapman
University of Houston Clear Lake

ABSTRACT: Providing pre-service early childhood general educators with a strong knowledge base of key aspects of early childhood special education is viewed as important due to a federal law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), stipulating that children with special needs must to be placed in the least restrictive environment, which increases the number of young children with special needs in general education classroom settings (Cook, Klein, Tessier, 2008; Siegel, 2007). For many pre-service early childhood teachers, learning about concepts in early childhood special education can be challenging given that pre-service general education teachers often feel uncomfortable with potentially having to work with children with disabilities, a population that they may have little interest in or understanding of how to effectively teach (Henning & Mitchell, 2002). This study introduced an anchored instructional experience using a new software program called PulpMotion to create video media that bridged and enveloped meaningful understandings of general educators with inert knowledge of early childhood special education. Pre-service early childhood teachers presented with the PulpMotion created anchored instructional video experience were shown to have a marked increase of on-line discussion board postings and reviews of “not required” readings.