The committee allowed four weeks for additional faculty suggestions and then presented a final version for approval in May 2000. The conceptual framework describes the understandings, practices, and characteristics of professional identity necessary for educational professionals to attain. In the course of this description, the conceptual framework articulates in more detail the values of excellence, diversity, relationships, ideas, and innovation outlined in the Mission Statement. The other values are an integral part of this view of the educational professional. Diversity is interwoven throughout the concepts that teachers need to understand diversity in human growth and development, in culture and language, in pedagogical approaches suitable for learners, and in the nature of knowledge, including the academic disciplines.
Cultural responsiveness is a criterion for quality practice.
The framework portrays the practitioner as a person in relationship with students, parents, and the local school, and academic communities. By using the framework to guide our teacher education curriculum, we also prepare professionals who meet state and national accountability criteria. This conceptual framework is detailed enough for teacher education faculty to use as a guide for curriculum development and assessment, but it is also flexible enough to allow for innovation by the faculty and its teacher candidates. The conceptual framework can provide a coherent system for ensuring alignment among curriculum, instruction, field experiences, clinical practice, and assessment across a candidate's program. Curriculum and instruction can be organized to focus on all three aspects of professional development increasing understandings, improving practices, and enhancing aspects of identity stressing the interplay among them.