Bilingual Special Education Teachers' Shifting Paradigms: Complex Responses to Educational Reform

This study examined the nature and process of change among five bilingual special education teachers as they attempted to modify existing instructional practices. Three factors affected the change process: (a) The more special education training in the teachers' background, the stronger their reductionist orientation; (b) change involves shifts in instructional practices and shifts in beliefs, and they do not automatically go hand in hand; and (c) change is most facilitated at the beginning stages of collaboration by including practicing members of the teachers' occupational community as agents of change.