Measuring Special Education Preservice Teachers' Knowledge, Reflective Ability, and Tutored Student Outcomes on Foundational Literacy Skills

Professional organizations, researchers, and teacher educators have all highlighted the need for teachers to have deep, extensive, and flexible knowledge about teaching foundational skills (i.e., phonological awareness, phonics, and spelling) to beginning readers and students with a learning disability in word-level reading and for teacher preparation programs to be instrumental in building this knowledge base. In this study, special education preservice teacher knowledge and perceptions about foundational skills were assessed before and after a semester-long literacy course with connected fieldwork (i.e., tutoring) as well as their reflective ability. Special education preservice teachers' knowledge scores were significantly higher from pre-to post-test, and significantly different when compared to peers in a general education literacy course. Special education preservice teachers' post-test scores on foundational skills also predicted over half (i.e., 51%) of the variance in elementary student standard score growth on a norm-referenced measure. Reflective ability was not a significant predictor of elementary student growth and decreased over time. Keywords: Teacher Knowledge, Teacher Training, Literacy, Foundational Skills, Dyslexia, Reflective Ability