The inclusion of students with disabilities with special education services into general education classes has been an integral part of education for over 3 decades. It is a worldwide movement that continues to grow. Yet, some Special Education researchers remain highly critical, even cynical, of inclusion, despite decades of research that have…

As instructional leaders, principals establish a vision of effective instruction in their schools and support that vision through evaluation and development efforts. Thus, their beliefs about instruction in special education may have direct consequences for special educators and their students. Though research suggests principals lack experience…

Paraeducators are critically important members of school communities, but there is little statewide research on the characteristics of paraeducators. We therefore use over 25 years of longitudinal data from Washington state to provide a descriptive portrait of the paraeducator workforce. Paraeducators are more racially and ethnically diverse than…

Mixed-methods research (MMR) holds promise for investigating several empirical questions within special education, capitalizing on the strengths of quantitative and qualitative traditions. We present an overview of MMR in special education and quality indicators for conducting and reporting such studies. We look to the future for how MMR may…

Although quality guidelines for single-case intervention research emphasize the importance of concurrent baselines in multiple-baseline and multiple-probe designs, nonconcurrent variations on these designs persist in the research literature. This study describes a systematic review of special education intervention studies (k = 406) between 1988…

How do special education-related professionals parenting children with disabilities experience the special education system? This qualitative exploratory study delves into the experiences of 25 mother-educators who are special education-related professionals navigating the special education system for their children with disabilities. Through…

Open practices, such as preregistration, registered reports, open materials, open data, open analytic code, replication, open peer review, open access, and conflict-of-interest and funding statements, support the transparency, accessibility, and reproducibility of research and other scholarship. The purpose of this review was to examine the…

Under federal law, parents have the right to decline, or waive, English language support services when their child is identified as an English learner (EL) in school. In this study, we focus on this important subgroup of ELs--referred to as waived ELs--at the understudied intersection of EL status and special education (SPED) status. Using…

Secondary data analyses occur when new analyses are proposed for existing data. Although they are prevalent in special education research, there is little guidance on how to prepare secondary data analyses studies. Preregistration of secondary data analyses studies provides a nice opportunity and structure for fellow researchers to share…

The central obligation under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act is to provide each eligible student with a free appropriate public education (FAPE). In "Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District RE-1" (2017), the U.S. Supreme Court revised the prior substantive standard for determining FAPE that the court had developed in…

In this preregistered study, we confirmed a transition-planning construct and determined its relationship with an established economic-hardship construct using parent- and youth-reported data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study 2012 and following established quality indicators of preregistered secondary data analyses studies.…

High-quality systematic literature reviews provide a systematic process for identifying, synthesizing, and critiquing multiple studies and, in turn, inform theory, research, practice, and policy. With a focus on special education systematic reviews, we propose four core principles (i.e., coherence, contextualization, generativity, and…

Qualitative research (QR) has gained visibility and acceptance in the field of special education due to early efforts to identify quality indicators focused on technical and methodological aspects of QR. Whereas these indicators focused on credibility and trustworthiness of data, this article articulates additional QR quality indicators to enhance…

Retaining teachers is an important priority for school leaders, especially in special education, a field with chronic shortages. We analyzed a nationally representative survey using conservation of resources theory to examine how job demands and resources interacted with one another and with teachers' assignments (i.e., as special and general…

Evidence-based assessment (EBA) requires that investigators employ scientific theories and research findings to guide decisions about what domains to measure, how and when to measure them, and how to make decisions and interpret results. To implement EBA, investigators need high-quality assessment tools along with evidence-based processes. We…