Program Learning Outcomes

The teacher effectively uses multiple representations and explanations of disciplinary concepts that capture key ideas and link them to students’ prior understandings.

The teacher has enthusiasm for the discipline(s) he/she teaches and sees connections to everyday life.

The teacher understands how learning occurs - how students construct knowledge, acquire skills, and develop habits of mind - and knows how to use instructional strategies that promote student learning.

The teacher stimulates student reflection on prior knowledge and links new ideas to already familiar ideas, making connections to students’ experiences, providing opportunities for active engagement, manipulation, and testing of ideas and materials and encouraging students to assume responsibility for shaping their learning goals.

The teacher identifies and designs instruction appropriate to students’ stages of development, learning styles, strengths, and needs.

The teacher uses teaching approaches that are sensitive to the multiple experiences of learners and that address different learning and performance modes.

The teacher varies his/her role in the instructional process (i.e., instructor, facilitator, coach, audience) in relation to the content, purposes of instruction, and the needs of students.

The teacher uses educational technology to broaden student knowledge about technology, to deliver instruction to students at different levels and paces, and for advanced levels of learning.

The teacher engages students in individual and group learning activities that help them develop the motivation to achieve - for example, by relating lessons to students’ personal interests, allowing students to have choices in their learning and leading students to ask questions and pursue problems that are meaningful to them.