Strategic Beliefs of the Faculty in the College of Education
All Programs, Offices, and Activities
- We believe in the power of having a diversity of students and faculty in our programs.
- We believe that the program policies and the delivery of instruction should be primarily focused on meeting the needs of our students, preparing them for their careers, and providing the highest quality instruction and scholarship.
- We believe that the activities in the College are best accomplished in collaboration with partner schools and organizations, with university and K-12 faculty or professional practitioners having strong relationships, common knowledge, and shared beliefs.
Initial Teacher Preparation
- We believe that the goal of our teaching preparation activities is the formation of initial teachers who are well prepared to enter the field of teaching and possess the knowledge and skills appropriate to an induction teacher in addressing the diverse academic, physical, social-emotional, and personal needs of all students in any school where they are hired.
- We believe that to be effective all initial teaching preparation programs at EMU need a cohesive, common vision of teacher preparation, provide extensive clinical experiences, use demonstratively effective teaching practices, and engage in ongoing summative and formative assessments.
Graduate Education
- We believe that the goal of our graduate programs is to prepare leaders and highly qualified professionals who become transformational leaders for schools, clinics, and other professional settings in diverse environments locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally.
- We believe that quality graduate education will not happen unless we pay close attention to all aspects of recruiting, admissions, educating, and retaining of our students.
- We believe that there are many ways of delivering high-quality, effective graduate education1.
Scholarship
- We believe scholarship is a definitional activity of our faculty and the experiences of our students. Scholarship is thus a collaborative, community endeavor of faculty and graduate and undergraduate students along with partners locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally.
- We believe that the best scholarship is encouraged with a free flow of ideas between and among scholars and students, is grounded within their local contexts, and speaks to their experiences.
- We believe that the scholarship of our faculty and students must be of demonstrable quality. We further believe that it will be most useful if disseminated through traditional and non-traditional venues, in formats and places where it will be read or viewed by working professionals as well as academic scholars, and compelling enough to change practice among those professionals and scholars.
1Thus, we believe in the use of fully online, hybrid, asynchronous, synchronous and face-to-face, and other delivery methods based on meeting students’ needs and providing quality instruction.