Education Studies Program Objectives: Habits of Mind
In the Education Studies Department at Guilford College, our teacher/learners:
- Learn the value of self-assessment, starting with the identification of strengths and then deciding upon next steps, moving away from focusing on deficiencies and honoring the knowledge and beliefs they bring to the learning process (Self Assessment).
- Work to build community and a sense of mutual responsibility through reflective practice in learning with and from others. Value collaboration in teaching and learning. (Collaborative Learning).
- Understand themselves as global citizens who must seek insight into all cultures and voices in order to meet the needs of diverse learners (Global/Multicultural Perspective).
- Recognize that teachers must assume the role of ethnographers within the classroom or school, acknowledging that finding the "right" way to teach must be based on careful observation, inquiry, and analysis (Teachers As Ethnographers).
- Read and listen to multiple viewpoints about the profession of teaching, recognizing that ideas and decisions about learning can be seen from various points of view (Multiple Views of Teaching/Learning).
- Focus on the learner, respecting individual student's characteristics and needs, and regarding the curriculum as a resource when designing learning activities (Focus on the Learner).
- Define knowledge in many ways, integrating content and skills from their two majors and the general curriculum. View all of their professors as educators who can define excellence in education. Recognize that Education is inherently interdisciplinary (Interdisciplinary Knowledge).
- Develop a repertoire of teaching approaches, enlightened but not confined by developmental perspectives, attending to the processes of learning as much as the quality of their students' products and performances (Process-oriented Teaching Repertoire).
- Comprehend how their experiences in the Education Studies Program align with the Five Academic Principles of the College and maintain a critical perspective. (Critical Curriculum Inquiry).
- Respond to the spiritual dimensions of learning and living through seeking to discover, rediscover, interpret, and create knowledge through life (Respond to the Spiritual Dimensions of Learning).
- Relate the experiences and ideas they have encountered in the Education Studies Program to their own teaching, allowing them to see that there is continual interplay between theory and practice, each informing and modifying the other (Understand Praxis).