The teaching and learning concentrations are designed both for practicing classroom teachers seeking to improve their skills and upgrade their qualifications or certification, and for professionals in other fields desiring a career change into teaching. Their main focus is on the classroom itself, and their primary goal is to increase instructional effectiveness in achieving desired learning outcomes, for adolescents and adults alike.

Most courses use two general approaches in pursuing this goal. The first is students’ assimilating the results of scholarly research on teaching and learning and integrating it with their individual experiences; the second is students’ examining and evaluating some of the many conflicting opinions on the appropriate content and methodologies of teaching. Both are intended to expand students’ perspectives, and thereby expand their abilities to make well-reasoned choices on methods, contents, and results that would be most suitable to their individual circumstances.

The school leadership concentrations are intended for both teachers and administrators interested in initiating or enhancing a career in educational administration. Much of the program is applicable to use in community colleges as well. Its two main purposes are enabling participants to master the knowledge and techniques necessary for educational management, and to review and evaluate best practices from both the public and private sectors in order to select among the managerial options available to address their various courses of action.

“Both the degree concentration and the certificate are designed to satisfy the six area standards of the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC). The certificate provides the general knowledge areas most states require for early-career school leaders, the degree concentration for those areas required of principals and superintendents.”

The general approaches used in pursuing these purposes are similar to those in the teaching and learning concentrations. First, participants investigate the scholarly research on educational administration, and evaluate it in terms of their previous experience and expectations of the future; second, they review the debates over past and current issues such as motivating and developing professional employees, management styles and a unionized environment, financial and legal options and constraints, and social and political influences on future trends.

Each concentration has specific objectives. The overall outcomes for the MSEd program are as follows:

• Gain Knowledge and Skills in the Education Profession
• Engage in Reflective Practice
• Think Critically
• Write with Clarity