Restriction(s): Admission to Teacher Education and Teacher Development program or departmental approval. This course brings together policy-related theories and practices regarding teacher education and teacher development. It provides teacher educators with the habits of mind, skills, tools, and resources to analyze and evaluate: social, political, and economic arguments for increasing the quality of the teaching force; the competing agendas for the reform of teacher education (including professionalization, deregulation, and social justice); and the competing conceptions of teacher quality that accompany different theoretical perspectives. Teacher educators study a variety of teacher education and development issues, including teacher supply and demand, recruitment, initial preparation, certification, induction, continuing professional development, and program accreditation. They consider the impact of existing policies on teacher quality and teacher distribution and critique policies derived from current local, state, and federal legislation. They also explore their roles as advocates for teachers, students and families. Using data from the Schools and Staffing Survey (NCES), participants investigate a policy-related issue relevant to teacher education and teacher development.
Restriction(s): Admission to Teacher Education and Teacher Development program or departmental approval. In this course, future teacher educators examine the intellectual, moral, and practical dimensions of teaching and of learning to teach in contexts characterized by diversity related to such socio-cultural dimensions as race, ethnicity, language, gender, (dis)ability, and social class. They explore theories and research related to preparing prospective teachers and supporting the continuing education of practicing teachers to successfully educate students of diverse backgrounds. They learn about the elements of culturally responsive teaching and approaches to preparing culturally responsive teachers. They examine issues such as teacher orientations to teaching students of diverse backgrounds, teacher knowledge and beliefs, teacher socialization and development, contextual influences on teaching and teacher education, and programmatic elements of teacher education. They explore different ways to apply what they learn in the contexts of teacher education and teacher professional development.
Restriction(s): Admission to Teacher Education and Teacher Development program or departmental approval. This course examines teacher learning across the professional continuum - from pre-service through the advanced years of teaching. Future teacher educators will develop a framework and tools for thinking about teacher learning over time and different levels of expertise. Attention will be given to what teachers need to know at different stages in their careers and how they can best learn it. Conventional and alternative approaches to teacher preparation, induction, and professional development will be studied. A central premise of the course is that pre-service and practicing teachers need more powerful learning opportunities in order to produce more powerful learning among a diverse student population in elementary and secondary schools.
Prerequisite(s): TETD 802. Restriction(s): Admission to Teacher Education and Teacher Development program or departmental approval. This course provides teacher educators an opportunity to examine how they can support practicing teachers in engaging in personal, classroom, and school transformation. Future teacher educators examine the dynamics of inequality at the individual, institutional, and socio-cultural levels and the ways in which teachers, individually and collectively, combat these inequalities through school change and social transformation. The course provides a theoretical framework for understanding the moral and ethical dimensions of school change and social inequality based on such factors as race, ethnicity, social class, (dis)ability, and gender. Future teacher educators are asked to apply this framework in investigations of various educational settings. Participants discuss such core concepts as social power, privilege, dominance and subordination, prejudice, discrimination, liberation, democracy, change-in-action, agency, and teacher leadership.
Restriction(s): Admission to Teacher Education and Teacher Development program or departmental approval. Because language is the medium through which education occurs, it is essential that teachers and teacher educators understand the nature of language and the role language plays in teaching and learning. The significance of language for schooling is especially salient with regard to the large number of students in U.S. schools who speak home languages other than English and who speak social and regional dialects of English. In this course, future teacher educators learn to see schooling through a linguistic lens. Issues they examine include the role of language in thinking, learning, and schooling; connections between language, culture, and identity; language variation; principles of first and second language learning; the nature of academic English; and educational practices that promote the success of students of diverse linguistic backgrounds. They develop skills for preparing pre-service and in-service teachers to adapt instruction for students of diverse language backgrounds.
Restriction(s): Admission to Teacher Education and Teacher Development program or departmental approval. This course focuses on the role, structure, and impact of programs of pre-service teacher education, induction, and professional development on the growth and development of culturally responsive teachers. Future teacher educators examine theory, research and practice related to such topics as selecting pre-service candidates; supporting teacher learning in pre-service programs; assessing pre-service teacher candidates; approaches and issues related to the induction of novice teachers; and promoting the formal and informal development and growth of experienced teachers. Participants use various theoretical, empirical, and political lenses to understand the ways in which teacher education and professional development program curriculum and pedagogy collectively shape teachers' learning opportunities in pre-service and in-service contexts. They also consider the traditions through which curriculum planning and practices are organized and evaluated in university and school district context.
Restriction(s): Admission to Teacher Education and Teacher Development program or departmental approval. There is general agreement that the quality of the classroom teacher is the single most important school-based determinant of student achievement. However, definitions and methods for assessing teacher quality vary greatly. This course examines different conceptions of teacher quality and critically inspects the values, assumptions, theories, and research upon which they build. Future teacher educators explore and use a variety of tools and approaches for assessing teacher quality.
Prerequisite(s): TETD 801, TETD 802 and TETD 803. Restriction(s): Admission to Teacher Education and Teacher Development program or departmental approval. This course provides participants the opportunity to intern as teacher educators and reflect on their apprenticeship experiences. With approval of the instructor, course participants select their type of practicum based on their interests and needs. Examples of practicum experiences include serving as a graduate teaching assistant for a professor of education, planning and conducting a series of professional development workshops in a school or district, or facilitating a teacher study group in a school. Participants must complete a minimum of 30 hours during their practicum. They also attend a weekly seminar where, using frameworks discussed in their pedagogy and curriculum courses, they reflect on their experiences and adapt their practices accordingly.
Restriction(s): Admission to Teacher Education and Teacher Development program or departmental approval. This course examines language & literacy as sociocultural practices. It is designed to help students become familiar with various sociocultural theories that currently frame language & literacy studies & to develop an informed, theorized position from which to understand and examine language & literacy practices. The course includes an historical overview of literacy research in order to better understand developments within the field today, and examination of sociocultural research orientations, designs & methods. This course also engages with the ideological nature of language & literacy; the ways in which teachers' & students' preferred ways of speaking and being literate can clash within the classroom; sociolinguistic variation and social identities; the dominance of reading over other literacy modes within US education; the ways in which classroom discourses shape student identities and literacy learning; in- & out-of-school literacy practices; and new literacies and their impact on education. This course prepares students to work with in- and pre-service teachers within a range of contexts.
Restriction(s): Admission to Teacher Education and Teacher Development program or departmental approval. This course provides a context for future teacher educators to develop the knowledge and skills needed for supporting pre-service and in-service teachers as they explore a range of 'new' literacies. As a part of this, students engage with theories about the relationships among literacy, digital technologies, and learning; examine changing conceptions of effective literacy practices in everyday settings; and consider the relationship between new literacies and school-based literacy education. They develop practical know-how to make efficacious use of digital technologies in literacy teaching (and other areas of the curriculum). They develop criteria for evaluating and critiquing new literacies programs and for making judgments about how and when to use different aspects of new literacies of classroom-based educational purposes. They explore strategies for working with teachers and teacher education students in a range of settings - including more and less resource-rich classrooms.
Prerequisite(s): TETD 801 and TETD 802. This course will examine current issues and questions in the mentoring of pre‑service and novice teaching professionals, and draw upon the historical and contemporary knowledge base that informs such practice. Students will examine theoretical and practical aspects of mentoring teachers at both the pre‑service and in-service stages, and will address the needs of teacher educators and teacher developers preparing to work in mentoring contexts. The course will also address issues related to subject‑specific teacher mentoring and coaching. The course will address the role of mentors in light of issues such as: curricular standards and reforms, structural supports for mentoring, addressing issues of social justice and cultural responsiveness, and high-leverage practices in mentoring as well as other current topics.
Restriction(s): Admission to Teacher Education and Teacher Development program or departmental approval. This course examines the history of teacher education and its relationship to schools and society from the 19th century to the present in the United States. It concludes study of institutions, organizations, and politics as contexts that shape teachers, teaching and teacher education. Students explore historical and contemporary analyses of curriculum and pedagogy in normal schools, teachers' colleges, school districts, state colleges, elite universities, and alternate routes to teaching. They engage in an analysis of the enduring dilemmas of teacher education practices and policies and the impact of race, ethnicity, language, social class, gender, and (dis)ability on the structures, processes, and outcomes of teacher education.
This course explores the practical and theoretical links between P-12 schools and universities that enable the ongoing development of curriculum, introduction of pre-service teachers to the field of education, induction of new teachers, and sustained professional development for practicing educators. Topics include significant historical events that impacted curricular efforts; the role of collaborative efforts between universities and schools in preparing effective teachers for a diverse society beginning with the Holmes Partnership; the simultaneous renewal of P-12 schools and programs of teacher education at institutions of higher education; research about professional development schools and other cooperative ventures; and the role of collaboratives such as the National Network for Educational Renewal and the League of Professional Schools.
This course examines where education policies come from and how they shape the work of teaching and learning, teacher education, and teacher development. The course identifies the factors and power dynamics that shape policy formation and implementation. The course also interrogates educational policies’ unintended consequences for educational equity and the ethics of enacting or resisting policies shaping teaching and learning. Students will engage with a variety of theoretical lenses used to examine educational policy and investigate a variety of educational policy issues, such as desegregation, standards-based reform, tracking, school choice, advocacy organizations, and teacher evaluation.
Restriction(s): Matriculation in a doctoral program at MSU. This course focuses on the education of immigrant youth to consider how transnational migration is redefining notions of citizenship and influencing state school’s responses to these students. We will explore questions such as: How do schools respond to the challenges and opportunities of immigration? How are teacher’s professional identities and work in schools influenced by nationalist responses to immigration? How do immigrant youth negotiate schooling as they craft their identities and different forms of belonging? We will be reading scholarship on the experiences of immigrant and transnational youth (undocumented students, Muslim youth, recently arrived immigrant students) in order to deepen our understanding of the lived experiences of these students in schools and to develop critical frameworks for thinking about teaching and teacher education in an age of migration and nationalism.
Restriction(s): Admission to Teacher Education and Teacher Development program or departmental approval. The special topics seminar invites students and professors to critically examine, discuss, and analyze current research on issues of social justice and equity in teaching and teacher education. Topics will be determined prior to course offering and publicized. Students will be required to engage in in-depth study of the identified topic. May be repeated for a maximum of 12 credits.
Restriction(s): Admission to Teacher Education and Teacher Development program or departmental approval. This course offers a critical examination of the empirical research in an area of study in teacher education. Participants explore how teacher education research has been conceptualized and studied in the United States as well as the genres of research and debates that have emerged in this field of teacher education. Within this context, the course will offer students an opportunity to closely examine the role of theory in teacher education research. It offers an in-depth and state-of-the-art analysis of a contemporary issue in the evolving sociocultural context that impacts and dynamically shapes the policies and practices of teacher education writ large. May be repeated for a maximum of 9 credits, as long as the topic is different.
Prerequisite(s): EDFD 820 and EDFD 821. This course provides future teacher educators hands-on experience conducting research that gives attention to diverse student populations and social contexts. With approval of the instructor, each participant carries out a supervised research project focused on some area of pre-service teacher education or teacher professional development. The research practicum may draw on work begun in the qualitative and/or quantitative research methods courses, may be related to a larger research project being conducted by a faculty member, or may be a newly developed project. Depending on the project, the student may participate in only some phases of a larger study or may carry out a smaller study from beginning to end. The primary supervisor for a research project may be the course instructor or another faculty member who is carrying out the study. The course instructor will provide primary or secondary supervision of all students in the course. The instructor will make at least one visit to observe and mentor students who conduct field-based research project. Students attend a weekly seminar in which they examine the application of different approaches to research in teacher education and teacher development.
Prerequisite(s): TETD 803. In this course, students produce an exhaustive review of the empirical literature in their field of specialization. They conduct database searches to generate a pool of published empirical studies across a specified period of time and systematically analyze the resulting corpus to identify patterns and trends, and, more importantly, to uncover gaps in the research that may inform and shape their subsequent dissertation research. At the same time, students engage in processes and practices associated with academic publishing (e.g., peer review processes, writing to a specific journal's author guidelines, evaluating publishing venues for their work).
What are the major roles, responsibilities and competencies of public intellectuals who work within the broadly defined field of education? In 1967, Noam Chomsky famously argued that intellectuals have 1) a responsibility to tell the truth and expose lies; 2) understand and explain how ideology functions in the course of current events to manufacture commonsense, i.e., as a lever of hegemony; and 3) to provide historical context to the issues at hand. Antonio Gramsci observed that all radical social change requires a certain kind intellectual leadership while Henry Giroux argues that for schools to work in the service of justice and democracy, teachers must be educated to function as intellectuals as opposed to being trained as technicians. In addition to these three public intellectuals, we will read, watch and discuss the work of James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Edward Said, Malcom X, Henry Giroux, bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Howard Zinn, Toni Morrison, Chris Rock, Stuart Hall, Dave Chappell, Myles Horton, Paulo Freire, Hebert Marcuse, Guillermo Gómez-Peña and others. One of our major tasks throughout the course will be to make connections between their ideas and our work in and out of formal educational settings.
Prerequisite(s): Matriculation in a Montclair State University EdD or PhD program and consent of the program director. This course examines current issues and questions in the education of science and mathematics teaching professionals. Students examine theoretical and practical aspects of educating science and mathematics teachers at both the pre-service and in-service stages, and addresses the needs of teacher educators and teacher developers preparing to work with teachers across a variety of contexts. The course also examines issues related to interdisciplinary STEM teacher preparation. The course addresses the role of science and mathematics teacher educators in: Common Core Mathematics Standards and Next Generation Science Standards, research on inquiry teaching and learning, teaching for conceptual change, modeling for understanding, discipline-specific culturally relevant pedagogy, and high-leverage practices in science and mathematics. As an elective, this course approaches math and science teacher education from the frameworks for teacher learning developed in foundational doctoral courses.
This course focuses on the practical and theoretical links between school culture and climate, student achievement, and teacher learning, including the mechanisms that shape powerful school cultures. School culture is examined through multiple lenses, including historical, social, and philosophical. Particular areas of emphasis include how school leaders and teachers shape school climate and culture to either promote or inhibit teacher learning, development, and collaboration; the nature and diversity of adult learners; the historical context of the culture of schools; ways in which a school's culture is shaped by and shapes its' participants; the roles of formal and informal leaders in developing and sustaining a school culture; and how cultural change and resistance to it is fostered and maintained. To support doctoral students in their research development, the methods by which school culture has been studied is highlighted throughout the course.
This doctoral course explores the extensive terrain of critical feminisms in teaching and teacher education. Schools are often considered spaces where gender inequities can be examined and problematized and yet the neoliberal agenda of these institutions claims a gender neutral stance that reproduces sexist, racist, and heteronormative inequalities. Much more attention needs to be paid to how women define and fight for freedom for themselves and others in their everyday lives, and this should not just be in an add on capacity (Sokolower, 2016). In particular, the teaching force in the United States is primarily made up of women, many of whom are working class and some of whom are of color. We know that the attack on K-12 teachers stems from societal misogyny. Attacking teachers is an attack on women. These attacks compound the sexism that many of us have already experienced. This vilification of teachers occurs through educational reform, the decimation of unions, tenure structures, and contracts, a constant insistence of standardization and scripting and standardized testing, a favoring of STEM content over the arts and humanities, and an obsessive focus on logic and the mind over emotions and the body. In this course, we will examine the historical context for understanding critical feminisms, the major theories feminist researchers in teacher education have developed, the genres in which critical feminist research is written up and made public, and finally how social activism and advocacy can be incorporated into our research and writing on teaching and teacher education.
Restriction(s): Must be enrolled in a doctoral program. This course is designed to provide teacher educators with legal, philosophical and historical perspectives for understanding inclusive education. We will engage in critical examinations of research and practice in schools by analyzing underlying structures and beliefs that strengthen or inhibit equity for children perceived through a deficit-based lens, with a focus on students with disabilities. As a means to establish new paradigms in education, original research-driven investigations related to inclusive culture, policies and practices will be generated. Reflective personal inquiry will be a primary theme throughout the semester.
Restriction(s): Must be enrolled in a doctoral program. The seminar is an examination of persisting problems and areas of inquiry in education using lenses and perspectives that are applied in the field of disability studies. Participants will explore the history and influence of varied conceptual approaches to the meanings of disability and ability in school and society to gain understanding about their impact on theory, research, and practice in education. The seminar will focus on a specific theme each time it is offered, which will vary by semester. May be repeated for a maximum of 9 credits.
Restriction(s): Students in the Teacher Education and Teacher Development Program or MSU doctoral students in other programs with departmental approval. This course is designed to support doctoral students to better understand what race is and how racism operates in American society and schooling in order to advance racial justice. The course has three main parts. First, the course explores several frameworks to understand the social construction of race and how it operates to better understand various manifestations of racism: Ideological, institutional, interpersonal and internalized. Students will explore how racism has shown up in their own lives, and will learn how to support educators to examine racism in their lives. The second part of the course includes an examination of different racial justice projects that have been taken up by various educational communities. Students will read a wide variety of literature in the field and will analyze trends in the research. Using the research literature as a guide, students will learn the basic construction of research articles on race in education. The third part of the course provides the students the opportunity to apply their knowledge in the role of teacher educators. Students will design and lead a professional development workshop on a racial justice topic for a group of pre-service teachers. As their final project, they will use their research from preparing their workshop and the survey data from the participants to write a rough draft of a research article.
Restriction(s): Student must be enrolled in a doctoral program. This course will explore the ways that we might reimagine teacher learning for social justice and equity. We will begin by trying to understand the terms we use and what scholars, theorists, and practitioners mean by social justice and equity. Using a variety of theoretical and conceptual frameworks – from abolitionist teaching for racial justice to post structural and queer theories – we will ground our work in ideas aimed at creating greater equity and justice. Throughout the course we will examine these ideas in relationship to educational organizations striving to do social justice work in the context of real schools and communities, attempting to understand how they support teachers in learning to do this work through curriculum, pedagogy, and relational practice.
Restriction(s): Matriculation in the EdD or PhD Teacher Education and Teacher Development Program; Advancement to Candidacy. This department requires 12 credits of TETD 900. While enrolled in TETD 900, students will work with their Dissertation Chair and their Dissertation Committee. Credits are reported as IP (In Progress) while the dissertation is being written. At the conclusion of the dissertation defense, a final grade of Pass or Fail will be recorded.
Prerequisite(s): 12 credits of Dissertation Advisement. Once students have acquired 12 credits of TETD 900 Dissertation Advisement, they must enroll in 1 credit of TETD 901 in every semester in which they intend to work on the dissertation, up to and including the semester of the defense. Credits are reported as IP (In Progress) while the dissertation is being written. At the conclusion of the dissertation defense, a final grade of Pass or Fail will be recorded. TETD 901 may be repeated until the time limitation for completion of the doctoral program as specified in the Doctoral Policy Manual has been reached.
Restriction(s): Students with EDD in Teacher Education and Teacher Development only.