Northwestern University Teacher Education is committed to developing a community of educators--including aspiring teachers, faculty/staff, instructors, supervisors, mentor teachers, and teacher leaders-- of the highest caliber who see teaching as a scholarly, complex endeavor that requires understanding the intertwined nature of theory and practice. Our vision of transformative teaching and learning aspires to develop educators who can nurture the learning of all their students through valuing the multiple knowledges, identities, and experiences that they bring with them to class and by utilizing learner-centered pedagogies. Our vision also includes developing educators who can design transformative educational experiences that prepare their students to contribute to social and cultural transformation. Our program helps to develop teachers who can nurture empathetic and productive relationships with their students, families, communities, and colleagues.

We will develop transformative educators by collaborating with our educational community to advance a set of intersecting themes, which we refer to as our Guiding Commitments. The Guiding Commitments will provide the conceptual building blocks to develop a teacher education program that nurtures beliefs in educational dignity and equity along with the ability to create educational environments that enact those beliefs. The building blocks form a structure where transformative teaching and learning is constructed by the intersecting ideas of equity and social justice, subject-matter sensemaking, learning and human development, and engagement within and across communities. 

MSED PROGRAM GUIDING COMMITMENTS

Advance Equity and Social Justice: We recognize that teaching grounded in equity and social justice is essential in rigorous learning of subject matter in any setting.

Understand Learning and Human Development: We understand human development as a process of maturation within a network of areas: physical, psychological, emotional, cultural, social, and political.

Engage Within and Across Communities: We engage in learning about the landscape, histories, challenges, assets, and resources of a community in which a school resides to inform relational and instructional interactions with students and families. 

Foster Subject Matter Sensemaking: We support the growth of children's skills, competencies, and disciplinary understandings as connected to rigorous and meaningful activities.