Educational Studies (Teach for America & TNTP): Admission Details

What to Expect

Curriculum

The MSEd program curriculum focuses on content that is meaningful, relevant, and authentic for teachers in a variety of school settings and regional locations throughout the country. The curriculum is aligned to research-based best practices; provides opportunities for critical thinking, collaboration, and reflection; and encourages candidates to apply their learning to their instructional practice.

The curriculum is organized by a series of courses that candidates take throughout their time in the program:

• The Seminar in Transformational Leadership and Teaching series is made up of four courses. Each of the seminar courses allows for candidates to take a deep dive into three topics that impact classroom culture, curriculum, and instruction. The final session in each seminar course includes a focus on reflection and continuously increasing effectiveness.
• The Classroom Management series includes two courses where candidates explore how to refine their classroom culture and management strategies to support positive mindsets that lead students to reach their academic goals. Candidates learn how to include families and caretakers as active participants in their children’s education.
• The Effective Practices in Teaching and Learning series focuses on the most foundational ideas, strategies, and skill sets needed to be an effective educator. Candidates explore special education and how to plan for instruction that includes all students. Candidates learn and implement backwards planning and create and implement effective assessments.
• The Teaching for Transformation series teaches candidates how to integrate ideas of access and advocacy into their instruction. Candidates also dive into best practices for planning and instruction within their specific content area and grade band.
• There are also multiple opportunities for candidates to deepen their practice by selecting to take Literacy courses and program-approved electives.

Capstone

As the capstone of their degree, graduate candidates build a digital portfolio. This serves as a demonstration of a candidate’s understanding of the transformational teaching paradigm outcomes and the InTASC Standards that guide and influence teaching.

Candidates enroll in an online course dedicated to the process of gathering artifacts and building a capstone portfolio. As graduate students, candidates have focused and continue to focus on developing a deeper understanding of their work in the classroom. Once candidates begin the capstone course, they will spend several months creating a capstone. This is created in lieu of a master’s thesis and is based upon experiences from classroom teaching and graduate coursework.

Candidates will build the following sections, focused on the four transformational teaching paradigm outcomes:

• Access
• Advocacy
• Culturally responsive teaching
• Dramatic academic growth

The capstone is a holistic reflection of candidates’ best work and their growth as teachers during their time in the program.

edTPA

edTPA is a performance-based, subject-specific assessment and support system used by teacher preparation programs throughout the U.S. to emphasize, measure, and support the skills and knowledge that all teachers need from their first day in the classroom.

edTPA is a subject-specific assessment that includes versions for 27 teaching fields, ranging from pre-kindergarten through high school. The assessment features a common architecture focused on three tasks: planning, instruction, and assessment. For candidates in elementary placements, a content-specific fourth task may also be necessary.

edTPA requires aspiring teachers to demonstrate readiness to teach through lesson plans designed to support their students’ strengths and needs, engage real students in ambitious learning, analyze whether their students are learning, and adjust their instruction to become more effective. Teacher candidates submit unedited video recordings of themselves at work in a real classroom as part of a portfolio that is scored by highly trained educators in their content area. edTPA builds on decades of teacher performance assessment development and research regarding teaching skills and practices that improve student learning.

The edTPA course is a 16-week course designed to prepare and support candidates toward a successful edTPA submission. Candidates will be broken up into content-specific groups and assigned an edTPA facilitator. This facilitator will act as a content expert, provide high-level non-corrective feedback, and host various conferences to support positive academic outcomes.

Student Outcomes

Upon successful completion of the MSEd degree, we expect each graduate will:

• Collaborate with colleagues on a variety of relevant topics
• Develop awareness of current best practices in the field of education, including those related to teaching students with special needs
• Apply course resources and learning to instructional practices and to colleague, student, and family partnerships
• Plan and execute meaningful opportunities for students according to the principles of student access, advocacy, Culturally Responsive Teaching and Academic Growth
• Demonstrate proficiency in topics including backward design, data analysis, differentiation, classroom management, family engagement, and culturally responsive teaching
• Engage in opportunities for meaningful reflection and commitment to continuous growth and ongoing development