Easy-to-use progress-monitoring and intervention techniques are attractive because most teachers are crunched for time and teacher instructional time is often consumed with paperwork, especially for progress monitoring and discipline. Some studies indicate up to 50% of a special educator's time may be spent on paperwork. Methods that serve a dual…

The authors examined, by direct observation and 1 hr interval self-reporting, teacher time use in 4 types of special education programs (adaptive behavior units, content mastery, coteaching, resource room). Over 7,000 pieces of data were collected across an academic year from 31 teachers in 24 schools within 9 districts in the Southwestern United…

Very little research exists on the dependability of handheld computers used in public school classrooms. This study addresses four dependability criteria--reliability, maintainability, availability, and safety--to evaluate a data collection tool on a handheld computer. Data were collected from five sources: (1) time-use estimations by 19 special…

How special education teachers spend their time is largely unknown. Yet conceptually, "time" is one of the most tangible and salient variables of the effective instruction literature, Carroll's model of school learning and many economic models of performance measures. This currently unknown use of teacher time has clear and important…

Instructional time use is an intervention without equal. The measure of such has clear and important implications for special education practice and research. Although exhortations to maximize instruction and thereby student engagement exist throughout the literature, few studies discuss how special education teachers use their time, and none…

Studies on special education teacher time use (TTU) have indicated that special education teachers spend small percentages of their day teaching. The authors examined goal setting and self-monitoring to change the time use of 4 teachers. In terms of TTU, each teacher articulated goals for increasing some tasks (e.g., instruction) and decreasing…

Recent federal legislation is affecting how special educators assess students, select curricula, document growth, teach, and consult--in short, how they spend their time during a school day. This study empirically measured special educators' use of time over the course of several weeks. It compared actual time use with its perceived value by both…