For a competency-based system of teacher certification to be feasible and fair, a valid and reliable set of measurement procedures must exist. There are four questions which must be answered before competency-based teacher certification can be validly implemented. The first question is, Should teacher or pupil behavior be used as evidence of…

Three papers address the competency based teacher education (CBTE) movement, particularly as it relates to teachers of the visually handicapped. In the fist paper, I. Holman and G. Scholl review some of the activities related to CBTE in regular, special, and visually handicapped education to determine current status of the field, to identify major…

The philosophy of the special education program at the University of North Florida is to develop a competency based teacher training program at the masters level. The program is designed to produce teachers who can quantitatively demonstrate they can produce academic achievement gains and desirable behavior changes in all special education…

A statewide survey was conducted by the Michigan State Board of Education to determine public opinion on teacher competency testing. Concern about the quality of education in the United States has risen as students' performance on achievement tests has declined. Accountability, competency, and effective teaching are often seen as synonymous with…

The purpose of this study was to determine if students in a field-based program performed significantly better on a test of ability to assess and to teach specific reading skills than students enrolled in on-campus reading methods courses which employed the same textual materials and different amounts of field experiences with children. The…

The article presents an overview of the development and implementation of a competency-based special education teacher training program into a course-based format. The authors discuss the processes through which (1) competencies were identified and validated, (2) competencies were incorporated into existing courses, (3) procedures were established…

The past 15 years have witnessed a shift from creative curriculum development to accountability in teacher education. The 1976 "Statement on the Preparation of Teachers of English" developed by the National Council of Teachers of English noted a movement towards performance based or competency based certification of teachers and an increase in…

A survey of preservice and inservice teachers identified teaching competencies they perceived to be most important. A self-administered questionnaire asked respondents to use Likert scales to rate the importance of 44 teaching competencies. A comparison was made between the perceptions of preservice and inservice teachers and between the results…

Although there are many qualifications, it appears from several major research undertakings that teacher behaviors are in fact related to student learning, but that specific behaviors may be less important than patterns of teacher behaviors and, further, that such patterns of behaviors are differentially effective for different students, grade…

This study was conducted as part of a project to increase the number of certified teachers who serve students with behavior disorders in the rural regions of West Virginia, improve the quality of training to participants at both the elementary and secondary levels, and retain certified teachers who teach students with behavior disorders. Improving…

The "Portfolio Process in Professional Development" is a competency based teacher education program recently mandated by the Florida State Board of Education as the central element of the Florida Beginning Teacher Program. It involves a probationary year of supervised teaching for the beginning teacher before certification is granted. This model…

The paper provides a review of the history and current issues concerning competency testing of special education teachers. Among issues identified are the rights of educators versus the rights of the public, which abilities are to be assessed, effects of a decreasing supply of potential teachers, pencil-and-paper assessment versus performance…

A series of five papers is presented. Sherry Rubinstein, and others, characterize the changes of teacher certification programs and reflect on the factors propelling and influencing the direction of those changes such as increased emphasis on the description and testing of the skills and knowledge of prospective teachers, and the adoption of…

This paper examined some of the issues surrounding the Arizona Teacher Proficiency Examination (ATPE), including the rationale for teacher testing, the Arizona approach to testing, and selected student outcomes. Arizona moved from Legislative directive in April 1980, to the implementation of the Arizona Teacher Proficiency Examination in June…

Two questions were addressed in this study: (1) Is learner cognitive attainment stable across different instructional units taught by a student teacher? and (2) Do the pupils of student teachers who are education majors attain more cognitive performance objectives than the pupils of student teachers who are not education majors? Secondary level…