Historical and cross-cultural perspectives contribute to the students' knowledge of child development and approaches to early education. We recognize that students must be prepared to struggle with the educational and social issues of our pluralistic and democratic society. Courses strive to help students develop a thoughtful understanding of factors such as race, class, ethnicity, family, gender, immigrant status, and culture that affect classroom interactions and children's success or failure in schools. Curriculum courses help students build a broad repertoire of strategies for meeting children's needs in inclusive classrooms and for designing with children curriculum connected to children's lives. We believe that the arts are a fundamental and distinctive way of knowing.
People think in terms of images as well as words.
We seek to explore with students the philosophical and pedagogical assumptions they bring to teaching and to assist them in constructing a framework of beliefs centered around children as active participants in the learning process. Through courses and practica students are encouraged to question and expand their beliefs about what it means to teach and to examine family and classroom practices in relation to underlying assumptions and what we know about learning and teaching. We imagine teachers and children as co-learners in classrooms, observing, creating, and taking risks together. We seek to provide university students with opportunities to learn in ways we want them to teach. In group inquiry projects, students experience cognitive disequilibrium and discover their own questions.