MAEd Courses & Requirements

Current Issues in Curriculum, Instruction, & Assessment

Course focuses on important issues in designing, implementing, and managing school curricula. Candidates learn to collaborate with colleagues and stakeholders to design standards-based curricula reflecting best practices in culturally diverse and differentiated classrooms. Teaching and learning models that promote critical and creative thinking and metacognition are employed to help candidates become reflective practitioners.

Practicum in Curriculum, Instruction, & Assessment

A first field experience course to observe and interact in educational environments that complement the MAEd summer course sequence.

Foundations of the Teaching Profession

Course invites candidates to explore the historical, philosophical, cultural, and social context of schools in our diverse society, culminating in the development of a personal philosophy of education. Candidates focus on interdisciplinary perspectives on educational and social issues to guide reflective, professional practice.

Cognition and Child and Adolescent Development

Course examines psychological theories and research findings dealing with child and adolescent development and learning. Special emphasis is placed upon the ways in which theoretical and empirical findings in educational, developmental, and cognitive psychology contribute to enhancing teaching and learning.

Characteristics of and Adaptations for Exceptional Student Populations

Addresses academic and social learning needs of exceptional student populations in secondary level classrooms and appropriate interventions to meet these needs. Prepares secondary education teachers to develop differentiated instruction for students with disabilities, students at-risk for school failure, gifted and talented learners, and students who are culturally and linguistically diverse.

Classroom and Behavior Management

Provides behavior management content and skills that create positive classroom behavioral supports through strategies, effective teacher behaviors, and student assessments and interventions. Candidates develop an evidence-based classroom management philosophy. Field experiences provide authentic classroom contexts for candidates to reflect on implementation of evidence-based management skills.

Content Reading and Writing Across the Curriculum

Candidates engage in the study of processes related to reading and learning from content area texts and related media, and the instructional practices that best enable content learners to become efficient, independent learners. Candidates develop an understanding of the roles of reading, writing, speaking, and listening across content disciplines. Reading assessment and instructional strategies for students with reading difficulties, including dyslexia, are explored.

Methods, Media, & Materials for Secondary Education

An intensive classroom and field-based course designed to provide students with opportunities to develop and apply skills and knowledge about teaching and learning. Guided by University faculty and a public-school mentor, candidates learn appropriate methodologies for teaching diverse learners. Following initial course meetings, candidates are placed in appropriate sections based on their content area.

* Candidates are placed in content-specific sections after initial course meetings.

Internship in Secondary Education

Semester-long course designed to provide prospective secondary and preK–12 teachers with opportunities to experience and reflect on the practices of teaching their content area in school and community settings.

Fall semester. Middle school placement for 6–12 endorsements; elementary placement for preK–12.

Collaboration with Families, Communities, & School Personnel

Course designed to develop specific professional skills to facilitate effective communication and collaboration with families, school personnel, and representatives of community agencies involved in the development, implementation, and monitoring of appropriate programs for school-age learners.

Offered during January Term only.

Research Methods in Education

Candidates examine and learn the methods and techniques employed in education research. Emphasis is placed on understanding the research literature that forms the basis of professional education. Course includes considerable study of qualitative methods and emphasizes selected statistical methods used as tools in research, data analysis, and educational measurement.

Creating a Culture of Evidence-based Learning

Candidates develop competence in constructing and employing valid and reliable assessments of student achievement at the classroom level. Candidates develop and implement an impact study during the supervised teaching semester that utilizes the strategies of action-based research.

Internship in Supervised Teaching

A 10–12 week intensive student teaching field experience in partner professional-development schools. Interns apply methods, strategies, and technological tools to engage culturally diverse students in a responsive and effective manner.

Corequisite: EDUC 691 — Internship Seminar.

Internship Seminar

Course provides student teachers with opportunities to refine teaching and learning through analysis, reflection, and discussion of their own behavior as teachers and the behaviors of teachers, students, and other school personnel.

Corequisite: EDUC 690 — Internship in Supervised Teaching.