Curriculum and methods research in special education

More than 15 years ago, we concluded that the preparation of teachers remains an unstudied problem in education (Sarason, Davidson, and Blatt, 1961). We later concluded that it is unsatisfac­ torily studied for the same reasons that curriculum and methods research is of little consequence, inadequate because for the most part their basic underpinnings are inadequate (Blatt and Garfunkel, 1973); both the clinicians and researchers rely too much on specific methods, or curricula, or administrative organizations to solve or study pedagogical problems; and in our colleges of education professors offer their students "best" methods and "best" curricula, hoping to arm them with sufficient technical and clinical capabili­ ties to teach well. These connections among educational researchers, teacher preparers, and teachers themselves are so direct as to hardly permit the separation of one from another, with the goal of each seemingly to discover or invent universal and happy solutions to complex problems and issues. Shades of the Middle Ages and their alchemists in search of the panacea! And the foolishness continues as we continue to "grind" out teachers whose work reflects the conception that education is primarily what one puts into children rather than what one can get out of them, whose preparation has probably introduced and has surely reinforced the above conception, who might be able to claim that they are good technicians, but little more (Blatt, 1974). Witness the new competency-based efforts, our new certifications and uncertifications, and the new technologies, and you may conclude that the return of thought­ fulness to pedagogical research and practice is not imminent.