Presenters will chronicle the creation of a thesis handbook for students in an M. Ed. program in Special Education. The creation of the handbook was necessary to ensure consistency in thesis-related instruction during a four-course series delivered by faculty from two separate college of education programs across multiple semesters. A review of the content guiding semester-by-semester instruction will be discussed as well as challenges encountered.

In the Special Education M. Ed. program, instruction in the thesis project took place across a four-course series delivered over four consecutive semesters with portions of the thesis project taught during each course. Difficulties arose due to the structure of the M. Ed. program, which divided the responsibility of instruction between two separate programs, resulting in courses within the series being taught with silo-like approaches in which instructors often varied the content delivered within a course without consideration of the course’s role within the context of the overall series. This resulted in an inconsistency of content delivered and gaps in student learning.

The creation of the thesis handbook was undertaken to remedy this point of disconnect and to bring instruction during each individual course into alignment within the overall context of the four-course series.