Development of a curriculum for enhancing instructional design ability of preservice special education teachers

Abstract

Instructional design ability has always been a key objective in the education of pre-service teachers. Theoretical knowledge of instructional design is the cornerstone for the growth of instructional design ability in pre-service special education teachers. However, pre-service teachers do not fully grasp this theoretical knowledge, resulting in numerous problems in course teaching. This research aims to develop a curriculum for enhancing the instructional design ability of pre-service special education teachers and to evaluate its effectiveness. This research was divided into four stages: First, through literature analysis, in-depth interviews with teaching supervisors, expert special education teachers, and learners, and content analysis of official files, the basic information for curriculum design was determined. Second, a draft curriculum was developed, its quality was checked, and a pilot study was conducted. Third, 32 junior preservice special education teachers from Chongqing Normal University were randomly selected as a sample, and the curriculum was implemented. Lastly, curriculum evaluation and improvements were carried out. The research results were as follows: (1) the curriculum was comprised of 48 class periods, divided into eight units and three learning stages; (2) all pre-service special education teachers demonstrated significant improvement, notably higher compared to before and a significance level of .05. Pre-service special education teachers expressed high satisfaction with the curriculum.

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