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Education Department Learning Goals

Mission

The Education Department’s mission is to prepare teachers who have the understanding, knowledge, and skills to engage critically with diversity, build inclusive learning communities, teach for social justice, and commit to ongoing inquiry, scholarship, and critical reflection as they work with diverse groups of children and families in urban, suburban, and rural school communities.

Vision

Westfield State University’s Education Department shares a vision, “Education Leaders Building Inclusive Learning Communities”, anchored by 5 foundational pillars related to critical engagement with diversity, community building, social justice teaching, scholarship, and reflection.We aspire to provide our students with an exemplary teacher education program grounded in principles of democratic education and the culturally sustaining and antiracist teaching practices that cultivate a thoughtful and ethically minded citizenry.

Learning Goals

At the completion of their programs of study, our Education majors will:

UNDERSTAND
  1. Their own history, identity, and position within US society and that of others, and related impact on teaching and learning.
  2. Human variability, and the value of strength-based perspectives in work with children, families, communities. 
  3. The critical role of the teacher in enacting a humanizing pedagogy that is anchored in the needs, identities, and lived experiences of students, families, and broader community.
  4. The history, complexity, and power of institutional settings such as schools, and the ethical responsibility of a teacher in working for justice.
  5. The big ideas of disciplinary content and tools for inquiry, research, and curriculum design and implementation across content areas relevant to P-12 teaching.
  6. The architecture of the ‘self’ (Sealy-Ruiz), the imperative of critical self-reflection for personal/professional growth.
KNOW
  1. History of US, including history of public schooling, teaching, related laws, legislation, policy, etc. 
  2. History/role of race, class, gender, sexual identity, ability/disability status in US society and schooling.
  3. All MA Curriculum Frameworks PK-12, or bandwidth +/-2 of licensure range.
  4. UDL framework and technology tools to support teaching and learning.
  5. Strategies for assessment, differentiation, accommodation/modification for mono and multilingual children with/wo disabilities.
  6. Child/adolescent development and variability across domains from multicultural and global perspectives.
  7. Developmental progression of language/literacy and numeracy learning and interventions to support.
  8. Positive and responsive strategies for guiding and supporting children’s behavior both proactively and reactively.
  9. Strategies for supporting English language learner instruction across disciplines.
  10. Special Education laws, terminology, processes.
  11. Vocabulary of the Profession: vocabulary relevant to content areas taught in  P-12 settings, culturally responsive/sustaining pedagogy, antiracist pedagogy, translanguage, code meshing, community cultural wealth/funds of knowledge, relevant education/special education/SEI terminology/acronyms (e.g. IEP, IFSP, IDEA, UDL, MTSS, WIDA, etc.), etc.
DO
  1. Incorporate responsive language and productive questioning protocols in conversations with children and adults around disciplinary content and complex ideas and topics including racism, sexism, and homophobia, etc.
  2. Facilitate classroom circles, role play/enact conversations and practices with peers/children that build content-area understanding and socio-emotional skills such as empathy.
  3. Teach large/small group and 1:1 lessons across disciplinary domains that are well-structured, culturally sustaining, and standards-based.
  4. Design and implement authentic and culturally sustaining assessments and analyze assessment data to inform teaching.
  5. Implement responsive and restorative practices/interventions in the classroom and in work with families.
  6. Collaborate with peers, students, colleagues and families to problem solve around student needs and relevant barriers to learning related to academic, social-emotional, community issues.
  7. Critically evaluate curriculum for content demands/quality, bias/racism, and relevance/potential for use in classroom.
  8. Develop well-structured units and lessons grounded in big ideas, reflective of students needs and experiences, and anchored in deep subject matter knowledge.
  9. Construct learning and language objectives that align with lesson content, state standards, and student needs.
  10. Examine lessons/units and adapt as needed (e.g., differentiation,,modifications/ accommodations to address needs of mono and multi linguistic students with and without identified disabilities).
  11. Engage in critical literacy practices and facilitate classroom discussions that support depth of knowledge and understanding.