Department of Teaching and Learning

Academics

The Teacher Education Program at NYU Steinhardt

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NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development is committed to educating professionals— teachers, counselors, staff developers, administrators—whose practice is informed by broad and deep understanding of their disciplines and specializations, and by a moral commitment to equity and social justice. NYU teachers succeed in their practice by understanding and mediating a series of dynamic tensions that shape the extraordinary complexity of the teaching/learning context (See also Floden & Buchmann, 1993).

Tension One

Teachers must attend simultaneously to what they are teaching (content) as well as to when and how they are doing so (pedagogy) with respect to the learner.

Periodically, American education has been convulsed by arguments between those who see teaching and learning as centrally concerned with transmitting and receiving subject content, and those whose primary focus is on how people learn. NYU has had a long tradition of viewing content and pedagogy as inseparable, two sides of the teaching/learning coin. NYU teachers, therefore, are distinguished by a thorough mastery of subject content embedded in a thoughtful understanding of how, why, when and to whom to teach it—our version of pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986) which embodies this inseparability. We believe that every teaching and learning transaction embodies both content and pedagogical core in inextricable ways. Our vision of pedagogical content knowledge comes with a passionate commitment to engendering in the NYU teachers we are educating the same excitement and curiosity in their students that they feel about what they are teaching (Gudmundsdottir & Shulman, 1987).

Tension Two:

Teaching and learning acts don’t take place in insular classrooms, but are informed by and responsive to a set of complex contexts.

Teachers have frequently been prepared as if they were to enter classrooms which were isolated islands unconnected to the larger world; as if effective teaching were a technical problem involving nothing more than mastery of content and a set of methods or techniques. NYU’s commitment to reflective growth (Schon, 1987) that springs from evidence driven teaching (Kuhn et al., 2000), and understanding teaching and learning in its rich contexts stems from our commitments to socially constructivist learning theories (Fosnot, 1989,1996), to democratic classrooms (Pradl, 1996), and to human development for all: learners and teachers (Brabeck, Walsh, & Latta, 2004). NYU teachers, therefore, are prepared to see the classroom in its wider school and community context and strive to understand and act within the dynamics that influence it from:

Tension Three:

Teachers must function in the school world as it currently exists while simultaneously understanding how it has come to be that way and striving to make it more closely approximate what it might be.

If teacher education is to help disrupt the cycle of teachers teaching as they were taught (Mayher, 1990), prospective teachers must develop a vision of ideal democratic teaching and learning contexts (Dewey, 1916). At the same time, an understanding of the aesthetic, historical, socioeconomic, and political contexts of schooling will help them to realize that the actual classrooms they will see and work in will fall short of that ideal. There will be too little money, too many students, too much pressure, and too little autonomy (Fulton, 2003). NYU teachers, therefore, are prepared to function in the real world of urban or suburban classrooms while simultaneously being committed to striving to improve them, to bring them ever closer to their potential as democratic learning communities. The engine of such improvement is embodied in our commitment to preparing teachers as reflective practitioners who can use the realities of today’s lessons to build the basis of a better tomorrow (Schön 1983, 1987; Wilson, 2004).

Tension Four:

Teachers must attend to the needs of each individual learner within a classroom community context of fairness and social justice for all participants.

Learning and teaching are collaborative social activities. Today’s classrooms and schools are more diverse than ever before in terms of every aspect of the background and experiences of the learners. Individuals learn, but they do so in relationship to classmates, teachers, parents and even the intellectual community that we are initiated into as we study a subject. What is crucial about these teaching/learning transactions is that they are two-way streets marked by mutual respect, negotiation, and collaboration (Bryk & Schneider, 2002, Noddings, 2002). We respect diversity of ideas as well as background, and know that divergent views are to be encouraged, not suppressed, and that even within our own community we have healthy disagreements about a variety of professional issues. Such mutually respectful democratic classrooms must be exemplary learning communities that both enact and are explicitly committed to anti-bias education (Delpit & Dowdy, 2002, McIntosh, 1989, Tatum, 1992). NYU teachers live these passions and have the knowledge and skill to embody them in their classrooms, since children learn from what we do as much as from what we say.

Tension Five:

Teachers can care best for their students by also caring for themselves so that all aspects of the learning transaction can be mutually beneficial.

Teachers are whole people teaching whole children in whole communities. This requires self-awareness and awareness of the complexities of the others they must transact with—students, administrators, colleagues, and parents. Mental health is not only essential to a successful teacher but something that must be promoted within teacher education and supported on the job. Our vision of the professional educator is embedded in an ethic of care which envisions the relationships involved in schools to be based on mutual respect and a commitment to treating all the people, the school building, the environment and ideas with care. Caring requires a rigorous commitment to help all students achieve their maximum potential. In a caring classroom, teachers respect the knowledge and skills that all learners bring with them and help each to learn and grow (Noddings, 1992). Teaching in inclusive, heterogeneously grouped classrooms is never as easy as pretending that all students are alike, but if we respect the dignity of all children, we can do nothing else. NYU teachers are caring teachers who create caring learning environments where each participant can reach their full intellectual, moral, and human potential.

NYU teachers are committed to life-long learning for themselves and their students. These educational tensions reflect the complexity of teaching and learning and the inevitable fact that no teacher education program produces "finished products." That is, the beginning teacher must be prepared to succeed in the context of real schools, but success never means perfection. Both beginning and experienced teachers—and teacher educators—must recognize that for long term success teachers need the capacity to learn from and change appropriately through reflection on their experience. All of our curricula therefore have embedded reflection as a core learning principle from the first course in field observation through the final curriculum experience. Above all else, NYU teachers are reflective practitioners.

Working within these mediated tensions requires a high tolerance for ambiguity, so that the NYU Teacher is able to work in the real—what is—while working toward an ideal—what might be. NYU Teachers are self-renewing people who have learned though their collaborative learning experiences to develop and influence a growing circle of colleagues. NYU Teachers accept change as a fact of personal and professional life, and are committed to working in dynamic environments.