Professional Identity and Integrity: Special Education Teachers’Perspectives on Pedagogy and Practice

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious

AERA Open article based on interviews with three special education teachers over 18 months during the COVID-19 pandemic examines professional identity and integrity and how they relate to ethics across personal, school, and district levels. The study explores how shifts among online, hybrid, and in-person service delivery affected teacher identity development, agency, and value-driven practice. Findings describe resilience implications for retention, preparation, and policy while highlighting motivations and cognition in inclusive education contexts.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

COVID-19 impacts on special education practice

Legal mandates and emergency waivers

Identity development, resilience, and retention

AERA Open January-December 2025, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 1–17 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584251350632 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2025. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Professional Identity and Integrity: Special Education Teachers’Perspectives on Pedagogy and Practice Tammy Ellis-Robinson Kimberly Colvin Taja Young University at Albany Through a series of interviews of three special educators conducted over 18 months during the COVID-19 pandemic, we gathered information about their experiences, their sense of integrity, and its relationship to the ethics of the profession at the personal, school, and district levels at a crisis time of shifting service provision between online, hybrid, and in-person learning. Interview data offered insight on the dynamic professional special educator teacher identity as it relates to a systems model of identity/role development. The interviewees were selected from special educators who had responded to a survey about their practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings indicate adjustments in identity based on values and experiences related to online, hybrid, and in-person learning shifts, educator motivations, and agency to recognize that these have implications for teacher resilience and retention in the face of challenge, professional development, teacher preparation, and policy in special and inclusive education. Keywords: special education, identity, teacher cognition, teacher education/development, qualitative research, online education, inclusive education, teacher identity, integrity, online learning, inclusive education Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic altered the state of education dramatically in the spring of 2020. Educators immediately altered their day-to-day practices, tools, and environments in which they were teaching and even their curricular focus. These were not one-time adjustments but continuing adaptations so that educators could continue to deliver instruction. For special education teachers (SETs), already tasked with adapting and adjusting according to individualized needs as required in individualized education plans (IEPs), the emergency led to additional complexity with scheduling, service delivery, technology, access, and student wellbeing (Rice, 2022; Schuck & Lambert, 2020) . The legal mandate to provide the services named in the IEP drove district-level focus for students with disabilities during the initial and subsequent year-long period of COVID-19 adjustments in educational practice (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2004) . Despite the spirit of this mandate, various emergency waivers possible through the CARES Act of 2020 led to disruptions and inadequate institutional-level provision of equitable education for many students identified with disabilities (Burkett & Reynolds, 2020) . The IEP was important to individual special educators too, but a commitment to their students and their individual teacher values led many special educators to operate beyond the mandates and remain focused on outcomes beyond compliance as they continued to adjust their learning and practice (Rice, 2022) . These educators made responsive adjustments to ensure that students with disabilities had access and opportunities to continue their education during remote learning and despite shifts from in-person to remote learning and back again. Like their general education colleagues, in the face of a critical event, SETs’ dynamic process of identity development resulted ina transactional process among their incoming goals and standards, emotional episodes, and teacher attributes to result in professional identity adjustment, customization, and refinement (Pratt et al., 2006; Schutz et al., 2018) . This provided insight and implications for infusing educator preparation and induction with a re

FAQs

What data source and timeframe does the study use?

The study uses reflective interview data from three special educators conducted over 18 months during the COVID-19 pandemic.

How does the pandemic affect special education teaching practice in the article?

The pandemic created ongoing adaptations in scheduling, service delivery, technology use, access, and student wellbeing, requiring teachers to adjust instruction beyond initial changes.

What do the findings suggest about professional identity development?

Findings indicate identity adjustments shaped by educator values and experiences across online, hybrid, and in-person learning, with implications for resilience and retention in special and inclusive education.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious