BLENDED INTERDISCIPLINARY TEACHER PREPARATION IN EARLY EDUCATION AND INTERVENTION - A NATIONAL STUDY

Interdisciplinary teacher preparation programs that blend personnel st andards from early childhood special education and early childhood edu cation are being developed across the country. States are designing st and-alone blended teacher licensure programs in early education. This article describes a national study that explored and described charact eristics of these newly conceptualized approaches to teacher preparati on. Methods included quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis procedures. Findings indicate that there are many concerns an d issues among faculty who are members of interdisciplinary teams in t hese new programs. The authors describe prominent issues in this emerg ing field of teacher preparation and provide a set of recommendations based on the literature and the findings from this study.