Welcome to the Faculty Toolkit: Supporting Faculty and Staff in Postsecondary Inclusive Education Programs
The intent of the Faculty Toolkit is two-fold. First, to help Postsecondary Education program administrators find ways to support the faculty who teach in their programs. The faculty can include those within the FPCTP program who teach unique courses for the students with Intellectual and Developmental Disability or those faculty in content or trade courses who have students with IDD included in their courses.
The second intent of the Toolkit is to help program administrators identify ways they can meet Benchmarks in the Transition Team Planning Tool used by FCSUA to guide program development. Domain 2 in the Team Planning Tool for Florida Postsecondary Comprehensive Transition Programs contains Faculty and Staff-Focused benchmarks. The benchmarks associated with this domain relate to the practices used and steps taken by each Florida Postsecondary Comprehensive Transition Program (FPCTP) to support faculty and staff who teach the students enrolled in the program. The domain begins with activities that provide professional development (PD) opportunities to assist faculty in adapting their teaching practices to meet the needs of all students in their classes.
Introduction to Faculty Toolkit
This faculty toolkit is a starting point for program administrators as they provide support for teaching faculty and college staff. It provides ideas, resources, and examples of how program administrators can develop a system of support for faculty who teach students in the FPCTP and college staff who interact with the students daily. Whether the postsecondary setting is a technical school, a community or state college, or a university, the program could not exist without supportive faculty at that institution. Faculty in higher education settings are responsible to teaching skills directly related to the careers within their content area. The college staff provide services like library access, student government activities, and dormitory life are essential to completing the college experience for students in an FPCTP. Having them as partners in the comprehensive transition program (CTP) experience is essential for the success of an FPCTP. This toolkit is designed to help program administrators find relevant resources to educate and support faculty and staff at their institution.
Some resources are applicable to all types of FPCTP programs. Some are more relevant to specific types of programs. For example, all FPCTP programs should have a menu of resources to provide faculty with knowledge about the population with whom they will be working. The resources for awareness regarding intellectual disabilities are provided within this toolkit and are applicable to all.
In contrast, resources for career exploration and development are much more important to technical school programs. Resources for career exploration and development are included in that section of this toolkit are designed to provide technical school programs with useable resources. Program administrators at other institutions may find this information interesting, but not essential to their faculty needs.
Faculty Awareness
This section provides strategies and resources as it relates to ongoing program development and communication as it relates to attitudinal changes an FPCTP has on a campus as a whole, including faculty and staff.
Supporting Teaching Faculty in Instruction
This section focuses on the strategies teaching faculty can utilize to make the content more accessible.
Universal Design for Learning
UDL (sometimes also identified as Universal Design for Instruction [UDI]) is a way to make the content of any course more accessible for a variety of learners.
