A Progressive Model for Education

In the Guilford College Education Studies Department, we envision an end to the out-dated and ineffective techniques of our little friend up there. In both our coursework and our field placements, we focus upon creating a child-centered environment which allows for construction of knowledge on the part of the students.

Some of the Distinguishing Features of the Guilford Program:

  1. All students have double majors.
  2. All students do a cross-cultural education internship, usually during a semester abroad. Internship locations have included Japan, London, Ghana, China and Cherokee, NC, and the opportunity to work with local Hispanic, Montagnard-Dega, and other populations.
  3. Tutorials, only one of several methods used in the first two courses, involve individual presentations by each student to a professor. The presentations and the ensuing discussion about the student's ideas are videotaped. The final part of the session involves reflection and analysis about the actual teaching and learning the participants experienced in the session.
  4. Virtually all courses emphasize a) the active seeking of knowledge, b) practical experience and c) a critical analysis of the interaction of those two activities, encouraging students to develop as a habit of mind the continual, reflexive relating of theory and practice (praxis).
  5. The emphasis on each student's own search and journey in becoming a teacher is reflected in the use of portfolio reviews as part of the assessment process. At the halfway point in the program and again at the end, in the Capstone Seminar, students take stock of what they know, reflecting on what they have learned and how they learned it and comparing their areas of knowledge and patterns of learning with program expectations and state competencies. They then present their findings, in a succinct oral review, to the department.