The professional development activities designed for the teacher candidates at Northwestern University are consistent with our vision of learners. We view the candidates as learners who come from particular communities with particular social and cultural histories. We also seek to help them think about their students in developmental terms, to design learning environments that are responsive to the developmental needs of children and adolescents, and to conceptualize teaching as responsive to the cultural experiences of the students they teach. Connecting theory to practice The vision of teaching in the teacher education programs at Northwestern University grows out of our visions of learning and learners. We believe that theory and practice are intimately linked and reflective of one another.
All practice is guided by knowledge and beliefs, whether explicit and tacit.
Our goal is to help teachers make public and explicit for themselves and their cohorts the beliefs they bring to the act of teaching and to examine and to extend those beliefs through research and reflection. This nexus of beliefs forms a powerful set of theories that drive at a gut level how people approach teaching. We want our candidates to examine the research base of knowledge about learning, about development, about subject matter domains, about schools as organizations, and about goals of education. We want them to connect this research base to their beliefs so as to evaluate and refine the latter. Opportunities to do so occur at many points in the programs.