The University of Toledo

Welcome

The purpose of EDU 1700 is to introduce students who intend to major in Education to key themes in 21^st century US education, as well as to the specific mission and approaches they will experience as part of The Judith Herb College of Education at the University of Toledo.  The course highlights the mission by providing for students to engage through service learning in urban/metropolitan sites serving socioeconomically at-risk students.  Through this experience, UT students will have one-on-one tutoring and mentoring relationships with students who will help them learn that both they, as future teachers, and the students they will teach have richly varied family, ethnic, spiritual, language/dialect, and gender identities—each of which may ease or hinder their experiences in mainstream, dominant culture schools.

The specific topics covered in this course are mandated as “themes” by the Ohio Board of Regents (OBOR) in its Transfer Assurance Guides (TAG), available at http://www.regents.state.oh.us/tags/.  They point toward a basic introduction to courses in curriculum and social foundations that students will take after being admitted to the Professional Education program: 

 

1. Professionalization. Exploration of the process by which people are socialized into the field of education and the roles of institutions in determining what it means to be a professional educator.
   
2. Standards-based Education. Introduction to the national and state professional standards (including INTASC, PRAXIS I-III, SPAs, NCATE/TEAC, and state academic content standards) which guide the practice of educators in today’s society.
3. Democratic Issues/Social Justice. Exploration of the historical and contemporary purposes of education for individuals, historically under-represented groups and social institutions.
4. Legal and Organizational Issues. Exploration of the legal and organizational context within which schools and teachers operate.
5. Diversity.  Exploration of the various components of diversity, including an awareness of multiple categories which teachers must recognize and respond to in their teaching, as well as the development of an understanding of how such awareness  influences teacher expectations and student achievement and the role of the teacher in a dynamic global society.
6. Curriculum and Instruction. Exploration of a variety of theories of curriculum and instruction.