Chapter 23: Building Capacity for a Merged General and Special Education Teacher Preparation Program in Professional Development Schools: One Partnership’s Journey Toward More Inclusive Practice

An urban university (along with their 23 professional development schools [PDSs]) collaboratively identified a research initiative to build capacity for inclusive practice through the redesign of their dual licensure internship sequence. The research initiative resulted in an innovative restructuring of the dual internship sequence to support inclusive practices in collaboration with special and general education clinical teachers, as well as newly designed internship “Essential Experience” guidelines to support implementation of the internships.