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Teacher Education Program
Vision themes and valued outcomes
(Click here to download the PDF version of this document)
Vision Themes embody our beliefs and valued outcomes (below each vision) are what we strive for in our TEP graduates.
Personal/Philosophy of Education
If teachers are to respect and understand how students make sense of the world, they have to understand and respect how they themselves make sense of the world and why.
-TEP graduates are critically reflective: They are willing to question their own assumptions and viewpoints, and those of others.
Study of Children/Study of Schools
To understand students and how they learn, teachers must be able to observe them and to learn from those observations. Since most of a teacher's interactions with a student are in a school and the nature of that environment shapes the nature of those interactions, teachers must understand both the student and the school.
-TEP graduates gather evidence from a variety of sources - their students' work, students' families, school support personnel, community resources - to understand how their students learn, feel, think, and act within the context of their classrooms and larger school community.
Methodological Competence
Teachers must know the content they are teaching and a variety of methods that are appropriate to teach that content. This involves developing a repertoire of teaching strategies, learning activities (etc.) so that when they determine how to teach a student, they can actually do it.
-TEP graduates design effective content lessons that employ appropriate teaching strategies and learning activities. They also analyze their lessons in order to augment their pedagogy.
Diversity
The essence of the diversity theme is to respect and understand students as individuals and as members of social groups. Good teaching requires building a cohesive group. It requires the stance, "we're all different, but we're all in this together".
-TEP graduates respect the different cultural, linguistic, social, emotional, and academic backgrounds that students bring to learning contexts, and they value student differences as resources to their teaching.
Collaboration
There are definite limits to how much one can learn from teaching without intellectual and emotional support. Thus, teachers must be capable of working with other people if they are going to meet the needs of students or if they are going to continue to grow as teachers. Professional collaboration addresses the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that are required to be a member of a learning organization and involves working within and without the school to support students and their families.
-TEP graduates are team oriented: They value the input of others, and learn from it. They are skilled in working within collaborative, professional contexts as colleagues and leaders.
Reflection
While collaboration is a requirement for growth, so too are analytical, personal looks at oneself. It is important to take a critical stance in reflecting on one's own work. The skills required of reflection cannot be assumed. Rather, they are learned from example. Reflection leads to the wisdom and insight to improve ones' teaching.
-TEP graduates learn from their teaching: They use (many types of) data to inform their decisions, and expect others to do the same.
Change Oriented
TEP graduates believe that "all children deserve the quality of education that few children now receive" and they are willing to act on that belief.