Cross-Cultural Concerns: What's Missing From Special Education Training Programs?

This article proposes a 12-step curriculum model for training inservice special education specialists who must today also meet the needs of an increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse student population. The components of the curriculum model have evolved from the authors' experience in mainstreaming, cross-cultural coursework, and other related teacher-training programs. The major theme of the model is that effectiveness in working with people from other cultures is a product of the complex and subtle interactions between emotion (affective environment) and cognition (the intellectuallacademic environment). The cross-cultural training components follow the general guidelines of Bloom's taxonomy: awareness, knowledge and application. From the training, special education specialists become more cognizant and adaptive to the needs of limited English proficient and culturally diverse students who are learning or communicatively handicapped. Suggestions for adaptation and implementation of the model are included.