VISION

As a Unit, our vision of education is encompassed by the following beliefs:

• We believe that education is not synonymous with schooling or training but instead refers to self-discovery, understanding one's natural and social worlds, and taking informed action.
• We define an educator as any individual engaging in conceptual change, and teaching as an intellectual activity.
• We define a learning community as any space where participants are engaged in conceptual change.
• We believe that social justice asserts a vision of human dignity, access and wellness, as well as the social structures upon which this vision depends.
• We believe the citizen-educator to be an individual operating within three spheres of political and social life: the global, the national, and the local.
• We believe, as members of a democracy still moving toward its democratic ideal, that educators are invested with particular rights and responsibilities.
• We believe that with solid liberal arts background, and imbued with a broad range of knowledge and abilities, the citizen-educator is best prepared to demonstrate competence and confidence.
• We believe the citizen-educator to be a transformative intellectual who is aware of personal power and agency, and who is able to critique as well as problem solve and therefore takes informed and principled action.

As liberal arts educators, the mission and vision of the Unit, even as it evolves, continues to reflect a commitment to the development of teacher candidates who possess "content and professional knowledge, skill competence and appropriate dispositions."

Over the past four years, our program has been in transition as we responded to changes in national and state education policy that affect not only the form and content of expected student outcomes, but also impact the form and content of teacher work. In the period under review, the Unit consistently collaborated with the University community and with our stakeholders in the public school system in a process to establish and maintain a shared vision of good teaching. Through regularly scheduled faculty meetings, retreats, reviews of comparable liberal arts teacher education programs, meetings with public school officials and teachers, and our participation in external and institutional workshops, we have ensured that the Unit has benefited from multiple perspectives and initiatives and consequently conformed to the highest standards of excellence and team work.

Our deliberations over the past six years have led us to become even more conscious of the value of the liberal arts experience, and of a broad and integrated base of knowledge, as well as our responsibility to prepare intellectuals who are aware of their agency and power to transform their communities. To this end the Unit has pursued a vision of the citizen-educator who embodies not simply knowledge, competence and appropriate dispositions, but also the ideological premises identified in our goals, philosophy, and outcomes of education.

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Contact Marcia Ellett Barker