Dear Readers, Editorial Board Members, and Authors,

We hope that your 2022-2023 academic year has wrapped up successfully, and that you are ready for your summer break. We are excited to offer you the June 2023 issue of the Journal of Special Education Apprenticeship (JOSEA). This is a special issue, the call for which was issued last year. With it, we celebrate ten years of JOSEA’s scholarly service to the community of early-career faculty and look forward to the next decade in the field. We thank Sang Seok Nam, the Journal’s founder, for his service and guidance that he has provided to the journal and the community over the years and send him our best wishes as he steps down from the Editorial Board. We extend our gratitude to both Ken Han and Claudia Tristan for their continued technical support, and to Jemma Kim, who added the role of Publication Manager to her Co-Editor’s role. This spring, we welcome Karolyn Maurer, who joined our team as the Assistant Editor. We also thank the Editorial Review Board and guest reviewers for their continued support and tireless service, as the journal continues to grow.

The current issue features seven manuscripts. It opens with the special topic of Innovative Education and Transformative Practices. Four articles in the current issue were submitted in response to the call for this special theme. This section is focused on changes in teacher preparation programs (specifically, new standards for California special educators) and creative approaches that emerged in the during- and post-pandemic space. We are excited to showcase three papers by California faculty. As a journal based in CA, we celebrate local research and appreciate the authors’ efforts.

The first article in the issue by Larios, Lewis Chiu, and Ylagan-Nicanor is a pointed, thought-provoking piece that discusses the reality of implementation of Education Specialist Teaching Performance Assessment, the latest accountability measure for CA educators. The article provides a close examination of the tasks and focuses of the assessment, critiques significant obstacles in preparing teachers in training for the assessment, and provides thoughtful recommendations for research, policy, and practice. Greene and Esposito turn the readers’ attention to another recent CA requirement faced by aspiring teachers: the need for a deep understanding and requisite skills for working with students with complex communication skills. This practitioner-focused article showcases an interprofessional collaboration between a university teacher preparation program and the speech-language pathology division of a large urban school district as one of the pathways to promote teachers’ implementation of integrative Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) practices for classroom purposes. Continuing the discussion of the current state of the field in CA, Kondo and colleagues examine early childhood educators’ readiness to include preschool-aged children with disabilities in early childhood (EC) care and education programs. Survey study results reveal educators’ positive views of inclusion and continued lack of comfort with the idea of supporting children with disabilities in their programs. The special topic section concludes with the work of Shauger, Boothe, and Lohmann focused on creative methods by which faculty can engage online audiences of learners. The article offers activities and strategies the authors have used in their classes to engage online students in their learning.

The second section of the current issue presents three of JOSEA’s ongoing research and practice submissions. The first paper in this section by Kisinger and Wood compares the effects of pre-session and interspersed attention interventions on the disruptive behavior of an at-risk student in an inclusive fourth-grade classroom. Results indicated a decrease in disruptive behavior during both conditions, with the interspersed condition producing the lower level. Teacher’s preferences (social validity) are discussed, as well as the implications for the field. In the next article, Randall, Hirsch, and Allen examine the effectiveness of video modeling to teach pedestrian safety signs to participants with Intellectual Disabilities (ID). The findings suggest that multimedia instruction is effective in teaching skill acquisition. Practical implications of these findings, as well as future research on teaching pedestrian safety to postsecondary individuals with ID, are discussed. The issue concludes with the literature review by Wikel and Markelz, who walk the readers through the realities of life for some of the most vulnerable learners in special education: students with chronic health conditions. The study examines the implications of complex interactions between chronic health conditions, absenteeism, and factors associated with SES, and discusses the implications.

We hope that you will find this special issue of JOSEA informative, inspiring, and thought-provoking. We would like to thank the authors for their excellent articles, innovative ideas, and commitment to the field, and the reviewers for their detailed, supportive, and timely reviews.

Looking forward to new submissions and wishing you a lovely summer,

Anna Osipova
Jemma Kim
Co-Editors

Articles