VIDBE-Q Volume 67 Issue 1
Committee (PSPC), had also updated and revised the Initial Practice-Based
Preparation Standards for Special Educators. All CEC specialty sets are
considered extensions of the global special educator or paraeducator competencies
(CEC, 2020). In other words, it is assumed that a TSVI not only has the knowledge
and skills for the specialty area in visual impairment but also all the initial special
educator competencies. Our Division was fortunate that within this process, our
DB competency revisions were undertaken with the most recently approved global
standards. Our DB concept paper, which serves as a rationale and plan of action,
was submitted to CEC and DVIDB received approval to begin the revalidation
process on November 26th, 2019. A copy of the concept paper (Bruce et al., 2020)
was published in the Visual Impairment and Deafblind Education Quarterly,
Winter, 2020.
Strand Leaders and External Reviewers
To give each of the 7 Standards for the TDB and Intervener sets attention for
review and literature alignment, DVIDB invited 14 representatives from the DB
community to lead small groups of collaborators, including university faculty,
teachers, interveners and family members of deafblind individuals, in considering
what competencies should be included. DVIDB also invited external reviewers,
including the two original authors of the competency sets, Linda Alsop and Alana
Zambone, to review what was eventually produced by the teams and what was