Master's Curriculum
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 handson knowledge with a rich theoretical understanding of how children learn and how they can best be taught.
A Foundation for Teacher Education
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 researchbased 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.
Most of the courses that students take prior to the student teaching experience have a participant/observation requirement that sends learners into the schools to ground the theoretical reading and discussions in observing the real world of schools. This combination allows students to test their emerging conceptions of teaching in actual practice and makes the transition to their own student teaching classroom easier and more productive. The oncampus courses also focus on issues of curriculum development, classroom management, assessment, and the use of technology so that all of our graduates are prepared to step into the highpressure world of standards and highstakes tests.
In addition to the pedagogical core requirements for all programs, which include background in multicultural education, language and literacy, and special education, each curriculum also enables our future teachers to deepen and enrich their background in the fields they will be teaching. Our discipline-based courses integrate content and pedagogical approaches so that we simultaneously consider an aspect of the subject—history, mathematics, science, literature, and so on—and how it could be most effectively taught.
Fast Track to Teaching
Many of our curricula offer both a normal and an accelerated schedule of completion of the M.A. degree and certification requirements. The accelerated schedule, which we refer to as Fast-Track, allows full-time students to begin with an intensive summer program and complete all certification requirements in 12-14 months so that they are ready to teach full time by the following fall. Part-time students can take somewhat longer to complete the program.
For teachers who already have initial certification, the Department of Teaching and Learning also offers a full range of courses leading to M.A. degrees and professional certification in areas such as English, foreign languages, mathematics, science education, social studies, and early childhood and childhood education. The department has developed other programs that lead to the state’s new category of initial/professional certification. A particularly exciting program is our curriculum for those seeking to become literacy specialists in either elementary or secondary schools. These M.A. degrees allow teachers either to deepen and enrich their professional knowledge in the field they are already certified in or to add a second certification in such areas as literacy, special education, teaching English to speakers of other languages, or bilingual education.
Turning Research into Practice, Practice into Change
To further strengthen the teaching and scholarship of our faculty, students, and graduates, the Department of Teaching and Learning has established two centers: the Center for Research on Teaching and Learning and the Ruth Horowitz Center for Teacher Development. Each has a distinct but related focus on teaching and learning in schools that is integral to the department’s goal of generating knowledge and understandings that contribute broadly to the policies and practices of teacher education.