Overview and Philosophy

Overview

Candidates are prepared to teach in general education classrooms, with a particular focus on STEM. This process begins with the study of how people think and learn together, and proceeds to support candidates in developing practices of close attention and responsiveness to children's ideas, reasoning, and engagement. Our faculty view children as nascent scholars. They see eliciting, recognizing, and cultivating the resources children bring with them into the classroom as the core practices of teaching.

Along with STEM disciplines, the program is designed to address multiple literacies, integrating reading, writing, social studies, and art throughout the curriculum. Candidates in the program are supported to design learning environments that promote equity and dignity for all learners, by valuing and building on the strengths of the students in their classrooms. They are encouraged to critically examine their role as educators as they establish and maintain productive, respectful relationships with students, parents, communities, and school faculty and staff.

Philosophy

In our program, we strive to expand how we hear and see the intellectual value of the ideas, experiences, and practices of young people. Candidates question their assumptions about learning and teaching as they work to reconstruct a sense of the intellectual work of teaching. The STEM focus allows us to explore how young learners make sense of the physical world, how they find and describe patterns, and how they solve problems in their lives. Elementary school teachers are “interdisciplinary” professionals, and candidates are asked to think about the possibilities that exist at the intersections of literacy, STEM, the arts, and social studies, and more.