The needs of students and the potential and limits for school change become more visible when teachers study education in the context in which they work. Extensive thought and reading, writing and disseminating of new understanding and perspectives. Experience ambiguity, uncertainty, challenge, and difficulty as a necessary mode of learning, within contrasting pedagogical and curricular forms. Teachers are committed to students and their learning. Teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students.
Teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience.
Our courses provide an integrated experience that does not attempt to divide content and pedagogy into discrete separate courses. Our pedagogy acknowledges that teachers are themselves professionals who teach. While we structure a learning experience for our classes, the plan invariably dynamic and responds to feedback from the teachers themselves. Much of the work of the courses is accomplished in small group work, typically in school teams. Teachers are encouraged to jointly construct understandings of readings and of knowledge about pedagogy in preparation for the tasks they will face in their own classrooms.