Purpose - Educator as a Professional A teacher is an expert in a field of knowledge who can relate his or her wisdom to novices.
Graduate programs provide additional professional development experiences for inservice teachers.
Students will be challenged to develop a performance based understanding of the possible causes and correlates of reading difficulties. Students will increase their ability to understand the issues relating to the diagnosis of less-able readers and the difficulties that these kinds of readers may encounter. Students will reflectively diagnose the literacy needs of students based on their strengths and weaknesses through hands-on experiences in local middle schools. Students will demonstrate the ability to effectively plan an instructional program based on the needs perceived in the diagnosis. Graduate students will administer and interpret an IRI during the course of the semester.