Special education teachers are often prepared to work with special needs children in programs that are separate from the teacher education programs that regular education student experience. This fact raises a lot of questions about the kinds of knowledge and practices students who are preparing to teach in mainstream classes learn about how to best serve the learning needs of special education students who are likely to be in their classrooms. Moreover, most special education coursework is geared to elementary level classrooms. While secondary education students often take the same coursework as elementary education students, there are clearly differences in ways to work with older and younger children who have mild to moderate learning and/or behavioral needs. We are fortunate in this issue of Teacher Education Quarterly to have four articles that directly address these concerns in the context of teacher education credential programs. Working mostly with manuscripts accepted during the editorship of Tom Nelson, and consulting about these materials with Tom, I have assembled this Spring 2011 issue to bring to light some of the issues and new work that special education educators are doing and proposing to ensure that all teachers are better equipped to understand and meet the needs of special education students.
