Teacher Education and Special Education 2016, Vol. 39(2) 81–82 © 2016 Teacher Education Division of the Council for Exceptional Children Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0888406416638515 tese.sagepub.com Editorial We are pleased to introduce the May 2016 special issue of Teacher Education and Spe- cial Education (TESE): The Nexus of Special Education Policy, Practice and Scholarship: Higher Education Special Educators Look to the Future. The special issue grew out of a series of conversations among faculty mem- bers and doctoral students associated with the Higher Education Consortium on Special Education (HECSE) regarding the past, pres- ent, and future of special education, with a particular focus on the intersection of policy, research, and practice. Founded in 1976 to provide a voice for special education doc- toral granting institutions, HECSE is a national organization representing major university programs that prepare special edu- cation personnel, including special education teachers, administrators, researchers, and faculty (www.hecse.net). Why a special issue at this time? The years 2015 and 2016 mark the 40th anniversary of Individuals With Disabilities Education Act’s (IDEA) passage and HECSE’s establishment; as such, our members believed that these two events presented an important convergence and a critical time to reflect on the challenges and opportunities surrounding the roles of special educators, the programs that prepare teachers and leaders, and our role in advocat- ing for policies supporting high-quality prepa- ration of special education professionals. As members whose work lives within the nexus of education policy, practice, and scholarship, we felt that we were uniquely poised to frame- related challenges and opportunities in the policy context, and to reflect on how we might (and should) contribute to continued conver- sations about these issues. In the summer of 2015, approximately 25 HECSE members came together for 3 days to engage in a deeper discussion of the future of special education as it relates to the prepara- tion of special education teachers, leaders, researchers, and faculty members. The con- vening produced some rich conversation and an outline for four manuscripts that have come to fruition in this issue. Notably, during the time in which the manuscripts were being pre- pared, Congress reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), lead- ing to passage of the Every Child Succeeds Act (ESSA). This historic milestone sent each of the manuscripts back to the “drawing board” as authors reflected on the content of ESSA and the new policy context framing the issues we were addressing. As publication dates loomed, we became even more excited about the possibility to consider these four articles as leverage points for key issues con- fronting our field. The first article in the issue, “The Search for Role Clarity: Challenges and Implica- tions for Special Education Teacher Prepara- tion” (Shepherd, Fowler, McCormick, Wilson, & Morgan), addresses the ways in which social, political, legislative, and con- ceptual factors have contributed to changes in the roles of special education teachers and the teacher preparation programs that pre- pare them. The authors raise questions about the degree to which current practices in PK-12 settings are supported by preparation programs and may be further affected by the provisions of ESSA. They provide a series of recommendations regarding the need to clarify the roles of special educators and to promote coherence with those roles in 638515TES XX X 10.1177/0888406416638515Teacher Education and Special EducationShepherd and West research-article 2016 Changing Times: Introduction to the Special Issue Keywords teacher preparation policy, service delivery, educational policy, teacher preparation practices and outcomes