Education Department

The Teacher Education Policy Unit (TEPU) developed a conceptual framework to create and nurture Caring, Curious, Competent, Committed, and Community-Active Professionals who can think and work within a developmentally constructivist and critically inclusive paradigm. The framework has been collaboratively developed, examined, updated, and integrated at the programmatic level. Formal discussions of the framework have occurred and continue to occur at several NCATE Retreats, Department of Education faculty (resident and adjunct) and staff meetings, at TEPU sessions, at Educational Personnel Preparation Advisory Committee (EPPAC) meetings, and with student groups. Informal meetings and discussions ensued as well throughout the College and with school partners (see Figure 1 for an organizational chart illustrating the relationship among the aforementioned constituents). Refinements to the conceptual framework were discussed collaboratively by the faculty of the Teacher Education Policy Unit (hereafter called the "Unit"). Final endorsement of the framework was achieved at a Retreat on January 15, 2003. Each faculty member (resident and adjunct) of the Unit was invited to be involved in the development and approval of the framework. Similarly, faculty, students, and community (internal and external) partners were involved and received a final copy of the conceptual framework.