Core Values
Teaching and learning faculty, doctoral students, and M.A. students see themselves as teachers and researchers on the front lines of the battle to revitalize urban education. Our faculty have published on a broad range of urban education issues, including school violence, racial segregation, the achievement gap, educational and youth development among recent immigrants, fiscal inequities between urban and suburban schools, and curriculum and teacher development in primary, middle, and secondary education. Our faculty have used their expertise to consult with and assist schools in addressing some of their most critical problems in such areas as special education, literacy, math, history, and bilingual education and have been part of school reform efforts that have founded dynamic new schools and partnered with a range of schools in New York City.
The core mission of the Department of Teaching and Learning is teacher education, preparing our students to meet the challenges of teaching and leadership in today’s demanding educational environment.
Our graduates will not only be able to succeed in their first years of teaching but will have a sufficiently thorough foundation in theory and practice to keep improving their educational work throughout their careers.
NYU teachers are highly regarded in the metropolitan area and beyond. Many of our graduates are in leadership positions in schools, universities, and other educational institutions.
The Department of Teaching and Learning offers newly conceptualized programs in all of our preservice teaching curricula. These certification programs fully comply with the latest regulations of the New York State Education Department that became effective in 2004.
In designing and implementing these new curricula, we have drawn on our faculty’s extensive experience as Pre-K-12 teachers, our years as teacher educators, our close working relationships with current teachers and principals in the New York City schools, and feedback from our graduates. Each program integrates practical experience and hands-on knowledge with a rich theoretical understanding of how children learn and how they can best be taught. The introductory course for all of the programs, Inquiries into Teaching and Learning, sets a conceptual foundation for our approach to teacher education. This course assists each prospective teacher to reflect on his or her own educational autobiography and philosophy; it creates a dialogue between the learner’s own prior educational experience, the experiences of other learners who are students in the New York City public schools where all Inquiries students are offered substantial opportunities for observation, and the foundational research-based literature of the study of education. Inquiries into Teaching and Learning is designed to allow our students the space and time to raise questions and consider alternatives as they participate in the dialogue and as they refine their core philosophy while engaging deeply with the philosophies and experiences of a wide range of other scholars, teachers, and students.