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Mission:
Within the Beeghly College of Education the Foundations of Education
faculty are dedicated to teaching, conducting, and disseminating
research, and participating in community and university service
in order to:
provide undergraduate, master's level, and doctoral level students
with skills and perspectives for the purposes of informing, assessing,
and changing themselves, schooling, and education; engage in dialogue
with education practitioners, leaders, and community institutions
toward ends which complement our mission with students; and contribute
to specific community service efforts which grow out of a commitment
to develop increased skills in intergroup relations, to aid individuals
and groups in the development of proactive programs which would
further the cause of social justice, and to encourage an ethic
of caring in the professional community at large.
Basic to all other commitments would be our underlying dedication
to democratizing schooling and community education.
Goals:
The specific individual goals of the Foundations of Education courses
are:
To enhance students' understanding of, appreciation for, and use
of historical, philosophical, social, and political perspectives
on educational research and on the interpretation and practices
of education and schooling.
To develop students' knowledge, influence their values, and extend
their professional skills with regard to how race, class, gender,
and other aspects of diversity affect teaching/learning processes.
To teach students the nature and methods of several formal methods
of educational testing, measurement, and assessment; to teach about
the potentials and limitations of those procedures; and to examine
critiques of, and alternatives to, classroom-based, district-wide,
and national assessment instruments with regard to their validity
and differential impact upon a diverse student population.
To provide students and area educators access to evolving instructional
technologies in the service of improving instruction across the
curriculum to all students.
To nurture and support Departmental faculty in their ongoing professional
development, research and scholarship within the local, state, national,
and international circles of educational research, technology, and
Foundations of Education; to sponsor publications, meetings, and
conferences that promote the work of our faculty and the learning
of our students; to extend our and the University's engagement to
the wider practitioner and scholar communities; to provide models
and experiences for our students from which they will begin to build
their professional identities with regard to the role of research
and scholarship in life as practitioners and to utilize our research
and that of our regional, national, and international colleagues
to exert a positive influence on the practices of education and
schooling, regionally, nationally, and internationally.
To serve as a unique interdisciplinary voice within the College
and the University, representing an amalgam of the social-science
disciplines, the fields of ethics and critical theory, traditional
liberal-arts values, and the applied fields of professional education;
to contribute to the University through our faculty's individual
and collective engagement with committees, seminars, and cultural
activities across the campus; and to promote foundational discourse
and collaborative planning among our College and University colleagues.
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