The Demand for Special Education Faculty: An Analysis of Paired Open Data

The demand for U.S. special education faculty has implications for doctoral training programs; higher education faculty teaching future and in-service leaders; and doctoral students preparing for faculty jobs. Yet the last investigation of special education faculty advertisements used 2010 data. The present preregistered study provides an updated descriptive profile by exploring special education faculty advertisements from 2022-2023. Using an innovative paired open dataset (POD), we employed a content analysis to explore coding categories (e.g., specialization, Carnegie Classification, position type) and relationships between categories. A total of 223 job advertisements were identified, of which 114 (51%) sought expertise in at least one area of focus such as a distinct disability (the most common was high incidence disabilities [n = 18]). The findings considered alongside available data on the supply of special education faculty may suggest that a shortage of special education faculty persists in the United States and warrants further research.