Special Education Endorsement

The special education endorsement advances teachers’ abilities to assess special needs children and develop and design appropriate instruction support for these children. Coursework and passage of the required Oregon Teacher Standards and Practices Commission (TSPC) test lead to the Oregon licensure special education endorsement. Candidates may be required to demonstrate prior experiences before enrolling in specific special education endorsement courses.

Special Education Endorsement Learning Outcomes

Special education endorsement program coursework and clinical experiences have been designed for candidates to demonstrate competencies listed in the TSPC standards for the Oregon licensure special education endorsement (OAR 584-018-0160).

1. Foundations: Understand the field as an evolving and changing discipline based on philosophies, evidence-based principles and theories, relevant laws and policies, diverse and historical points of view, and human issues that have historically influenced and continue to influence the field of special education and the education and treatment of individuals with exceptional needs both in school and society.
2. Development and Characteristics of Learners: Know and demonstrate respect for their students first as unique human beings.
3. Individual Learning Differences: Understand the effects that an exceptional condition can have on an individual’s learning in school and throughout life.
4. Instructional Strategies: Possess a repertoire of evidence-based instructional strategies to individualize instruction for individuals with exceptional learning needs.
5. Learning Environments and Social Interactions: Actively create learning environments for individuals with exceptional learning needs that foster cultural understanding, safety and emotional well being, positive social interactions, and active engagement of individuals with exceptional learning needs.
6. Language: Understand typical and atypical language development and the ways in which exceptional conditions can interact with an individual’s experience with and use of language.
7. Instructional Planning: Understand that individualized decision-making and instruction is at the center of special education practice.
8. Assessment: Understand that assessment is integral to the decision-making and teaching of special educators and candidates use multiple types of assessment information for a variety of educational decisions.
9. Professional and Ethical Practice: Be guided by the profession’s ethical and professional practice standards.
10. Collaboration: Routinely and effectively collaborate with families, other educators, related service providers, and personnel from community agencies in culturally responsive ways. This collaboration assures that the needs of individuals with exceptional learning needs are addressed throughout schooling.

Oregon special education endorsement standards model the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) standards.