Lehman Urban Teacher and Counselor Education Conceptual Framework |
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Introduction
Our Sources of Knowledge and Values
The Lehman College Mission
Our Working Themes
Our Partners
Our Programs
Our Graduates
Conclusion
Knowledge Base: Bibliography
Our source of knowledge and values
| The Cuny Tradition of access and excellence | Our experience and scholarship as teacher and counselor educators | Our students and the children and their families whom we serve | The Lehman college mission of service to urban community |
and our mission as urban teacher and counselor educators are exemplified by our interrelated working themes
| Building a community of teachers/learners | Educating for social action | Developing human capacity | Attending to our linguistically and culturally diverse contexts |
and our working relationships with
| Students, graduates, Lehman faculty, institutes, and administrators | Schools and districts; personnel and students | Families, community organizations and informal educational institutions | Community colleges | Government agencies and professional organizations |
and are evident in our programs, services, and outcomes
| On-campus and field-based collaborative programs | Curricula and courses | Teaching/learning climate | Resources and support systems |
which support educators who demonstrate a philosophy of education reflecting ...
| Values: Respect for diversity and cooperation, Commitment to caring, justice, and equity. Critique of received knowledge | Practices: Effective/reflective teaching. Research. Scholarship. Service, Critical and responsible technology integration. | Knowledge & Expertise: In academic disciplines, pedagogy, human development, multilingual communications, and an understanding of the relationship of technology to the above. |
Chart adapted from Guilford College
Revised 9/06
Introduction
Education holds transforming power - of individuals and society. Our efforts to educate are shaped by these core purposes:
to understand difference and diversity as foundations for learning and teaching;
to work collaboratively to create ideas that incorporate and/or represent multiple perspectives;
to create a place where human relationships are valued and nurtured;
to create an environment that is responsive to change and need.
Our mission is to facilitate the development of competent, caring, qualified educators.
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Our Sources of Knowledge and Values
The CUNY Tradition of Access and Excellence
CUNY is more than the aggregate of diverse senior colleges and community colleges and professional schools, each with its own challenges and aspirations. It is the premier People’s University, an institution that is also a philosophical ideal. Its informing idea is to promote intellectual achievement for the public good. The combined commitments to excellence and access have enabled the University to transform millions of people of vastly differing backgrounds into a remarkably talented and sophisticated community of citizens who provide leadership, not merely for the City and the State, but for this nation and our world.
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The Lehman College Mission
The mission of Lehman College, the only public senior liberal arts college in the Bronx, is to offer New York City and regional residents a liberal arts education and preparation for careers and advanced study. The college, committed to meeting the educational needs of its urban population, affirms the following objectives:
to provide access to a common body of knowledge and opportunities to develop a lifelong love of learning;
to promote excellence in scholarship, teaching, research, and artistic endeavors;
to develop the ability to think analytically and creatively;
to broaden educational opportunities through joint programs with other institutions locally, nationally, and internationally;
to promote an understanding of and respect for such differences as gender, age, ethnicity, culture, religion, sexual orientation, and physical ability;
to advance the understanding and use of emerging technologies;
to serve as a center for the continuing educational and cultural needs for the region through access to the college's facilities and expertise in the academic disciplines, professional fields and the fine and performing arts.
Our Experience and Scholarship as Teacher and Counselor Educators
We draw upon a richly diverse body of knowledge and experience to inform our practice as educators. Because we come together at the interstices of numerous disciplines and practices, multiple perspectives and ways of knowing, we create fertile ground from which we find important commonalities of values and beliefs about education and schooling. For example, we believe that learning, essential to human development, is socially constructed, ideally within caring and supportive relationships. We believe that critical analysis of schooling clarifies its relationship to education. We believe that critical analysis of the situatedness of learning is essential to our understandings of education. Although we are housed in different places within and outside the college, and although our bodies of knowledge and our philosophies of education do not always neatly coincide, we believe that together we present a model of reflective learners committed to excellence in teacher and counselor education.
Our Own Students and the Children, Adolescents and their Families Whom We Serve
Lehman College students come from diverse racial and cultural communities in which they are often developing dual language capacities and through which they have developed significant life experience. It is our belief that this diversity is a strength that should be both the basis of and supported through, their Liberal Arts and Teacher or Counselor Education coursework. Their perspectives as emerging teachers and counselors are an important source of knowledge upon which we draw.
Similarly, the children, adolescents and families we serve contribute greatly to our mission as teacher educators. Their strengths and needs, their beliefs and ways of life, inform and shape our practice, and provide compelling evidence of the effectiveness and appropriateness of our work.
Our mission as Teacher and Counselor educators
Our mission is to facilitate the development of competent, caring, qualified educators. To this end:
As Lehman college faculty we invite teacher and counselor education candidates to join with us in a life-long inquiry into teaching and learning. We aspire to form covenants with the variety of communities we serve to provide professional educaton candidates with the education necessary to contribute to the shaping of a democratic society motivated toward social justice. Our mission is to sustain an urban education program of the highest quality. This involves:
preparing effective teachers and counselors for a wide variety of settings;
exploring and addressing, through research, scholarship, and service, the challenges of urban education;
collaborating with families and schools, as well as with local, national, and international professional organizations to improve the state and status of education;
empowering students to see their role in promoting justice, equity, and caring.
This mission is best accomplished when there is a spirit of community and collegiality within and across College departments and affiliated Centers and Institutes as well as between the College and the schools.
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Our Working Themes
Our working themes are interrelated and support each other. They arise out of a humane view of individual experiences, emphasize caring and respect for individuals and their communities, and together comprise a vision of the purposes of education. There exists broad applicability of these themes to our work as teacher and counselor educators; with our liberal arts colleagues, our school-based partners, our program development, our curricula, and direct work with both undergraduates and graduate students; and to our candidates’ knowledge, skills, and dispositions as they develop their professional expertise. Language and literacy are an important thread within each of the themes below.
Theme 1: Community of Teachers and Learners
This theme suggests that an inquiry approach to education supports the development of educational communities, guides instructional decision-making, and shapes approaches to teacher, counselor, and school development. Within communities shaped by inquiry, experiences, both physical and virtual, are primary bases for learning and the development of programs and pedagogy. As such, learners' questions and curiosities are pursued and help to shape curriculum.
Theme II: Education for Social Action
This theme underlines the idea that teacher and counselor education is a movement for social change. This theme requires teacher and counselor education programs to provide opportunities for candidates and faculty to continually reflect on the mission of public education and their role as agents for change.
Theme III: Developing Human Capacity
This working theme is grounded in respect for difference and caring for people, and in beliefs that all human beings are capable of learning and nurturing. Basic to it are expansive views of provisioning for all students, of teachers as teacher educators and as responsible users of technology, and of the liberal arts. The theme supports a programmatic emphasis on high intellectual and emotional expectations and the richness of pluralism in the student body. It suggests a programmatic flexibility that acknowledges what students bring to and need for their education, and requires a broad repertoire of pedagogical approaches and content emphases. We believe aesthetic education and visual and performing arts should be an integral part of all education.
Theme IV: Sociocultural Context
As we live and work in a diverse and changing landscape of multiple ethnicities, languages, and economic circumstances, teacher and counselor education must be derived from and responsive to this landscape. This theme recognizes the importance of family and community as educational contexts, as knowledge bases for schools, and as rich sources for inquiry. It also acknowledges the importance of people’s cultural histories and the need to address such issues as class, race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion.
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Our Partners
Lehman Urban Education has an ongoing commitment to serve the Bronx and our surrounding communities. To do so we commit to being part of the many communities of the Bronx who share a common purpose: to better the quality of the lives of our residents of all ages. We will continue to form collaborative relationships with families, public and private school personnel, faculty of local and regional community colleges, and the staff of community based organizations and informal learning institutions to strengthen education in the Bronx.
Through our on-going collaborative programs, we work with our partners toward our common goals: to prepare beginning teachers and counselors and provide opportunities for continuing professional development and leadership development throughout a teaching or counseling career. Lehman has long been recognized as a leader in initiating and implementing collaborative programs with local schools and community-based organizations. Our teaching is informed by interaction with our community and school partners.
We see the basis for collaboration as mutual respect, caring and reciprocal learning; we all learn from each other. As a teacher and counselor preparation community, we ask teachers and practitioners to work alongside our faculty in the College and in the schools. In response to state and local educational agencies, governing bodies and professional organizations, Lehman Urban Education prepares candidates to meet standards set by those agencies as well as our high expectations for excellence in teaching and counseling.
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Our Programs
The curricula and courses reflect both the in-depth disciplinary knowledge provided by the faculty working across departmental and divisional boundaries and the pedagogical knowledge to support the development of strong and effective teachers and counselors. Teacher and counselor education candidates are guided to develop broad knowledge of human development, upon which their understanding of pedagogy rests. In these courses, emphasis is placed upon critical thinking, reflection, and problem solving.
The pedagogical content of the courses integrates practice with theory. Extensive field-based experiences, in collaboration with school and community agencies, are a central component throughout our education programs. Candidates are expected to develop their skills and capacities as teachers and counselors through both on-campus and school-based experiences with children and adolescents. They are prepared to meet future challenges in teaching and learning that includes new technologies and the changing needs of learners, schools, and communities with a focus on the urban environment. The program endeavors to support candidates through internships, remedial support services, access to technology, and continued mentoring of our graduates.
The teaching and learning climate in the education programs is consciously attended to by faculty and administrators. Teaching and learning are optimized within contexts that emphasize high academic expectations that are supported by respect, empowerment, assessment, and the encouragement of innovation and advocacy. Throughout the education programs, faculty are encouraged to model pedagogical practices in an environment that reflects the tenets and themes of this document. In addition, programs provide opportunities for faculty and students to reflect on the mission of education in a pluralistic democratic society, with emphasis on the development of respect for individuals and the diversity of their values and beliefs.
Ongoing self assessment and evaluation are part of the commitment of the faculty as a community of learners and an expectation throughout all aspects of the program. Assessment practices valued within the program are reflective, multifocal, and performance and outcome based. Some of the purposes of this ongoing assessment are 1) to support their own reflective development, 2) to document candidates’ and students’ experiences, 3) for review by the faculty and peers, 4) for analysis of candidates’ strengths and attention to guiding them toward the next steps in their development as teachers, 5) for future employers.
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Our Graduates
The Lehman Urban Education program is dedicated to preparing teachers and counselors who:
value student learning;
are sensitive to the needs of all students, especially those with special needs;
promote caring, justice, and equity;
respect linguistic and cultural diversity;
understand and respect intra-group diversity;
make a positive difference in the lives of their students;
empower students to take responsibility for their own learning;
inspire a passion for learning.
The aim of the program is to develop teachers and counselors who:
have knowledge and expertise in academic disciplines, pedagogy, human development, social action, and technology;
understand issues associated with multiculturalism, bilingualism, and special learning needs
have the ability and versatility to create optimal learning experiences for students;
use effective teaching and counseling practices;
demonstrate scholarship and service.
The expectations of the education program are that teachers and counselors will:
make a lifelong commitment to grow intellectually, ethically, and professionally through critical and reflective practice, community service, and membership in professional affiliations;
form collaborative relationships with school colleagues, parents and community organizations;
seek out professional knowledge of current and innovative pedagogical theories and practices, including technological advances.
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Conclusion
Education is perhaps the single most important enterprise in which we engage together. Schooling is the institutionalization of some of the process of education. As members of an educational institution, we commit ourselves to the belief in the transformative power of education.
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Knowledge Base: Bibliography
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