Observing Special Education Teaching Toolkit: Project OSET

Understanding and evaluating instruction in special education is difficult. If you don’t have a background in special education, it can be challenging to evaluate special education teachers. Even for administrators who do have special education experience, it is challenging to keep up with the field’s best practices.

With this in mind, we developed the Observing Special Education Toolkit, a digital resource to support principals and other administrators. Our hope is that you find these tools helpful for evaluating your special educators and for planning targeted professional development.

The toolkit includes the following resources:

Key practices for special education

This tool introduces five evidence-based instructional practices for students with disabilities. We recognize that teachers have many goals in their instruction, including meeting students’ academic, social, and emotional needs in culturally responsive ways. In this library, we highlight five practices that specifically support students with disabilities.

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Resources for observers

These resources are designed to support you in observing your special education teachers. They include: a Pre-Observation Conference Guide, an Observation Guide outlining look-fors based on the 5 key practices, a Research Library supporting each of our 5 key practices, and a video library showcasing examples of effective special education teaching.

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