Multiple Subject Credential (Elementary Teaching)

The Multiple Subject (MS) Teaching Credential Program is constructed on the theoretical foundation of Transformative Education - defined internally as the "process of developing inclusive educators who critically improve teaching and learning with a simultaneous emphasis on the individual and community." The MS program strives to help teachers develop four tenets of Transformational Teaching: a process orientation (Dweck, 2016), a critical community literacy (Puett, 2018), an ability to connect content to real-world context (Emdin, 2016), and an ability to be change agents (Paris & Alim, 2017).

• A process orientation helps candidates develop a Growth Mindset by “focus(ing) on the learning process and show(ing) how hard work, good strategies, and good use of resources lead to better learning (Gross-Low, 2016).
• Critical community literacy includes a deep understanding of the emancipatory potential of sustained community engagement, building on the (sometimes hidden or ignored) strengths already present in the community while simultaneously working to developing actions to identify and overcome obstacles.
• Connecting curriculum and pedagogy to the worlds in which students are familiar helps build scaffolds between Mainstream Academic Knowledge and the lived experiences of the students. This connection is essential to the learning process.
• Finally, our program works to develop teachers who are change agents. Teachers often are trained to think of change as one-directional, bad into good, un-educated into educated, but Paris and Alim (2017) remind us with their work surrounding Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies, sometimes being a change agent is not succumbing to the forces within the profession that identify resources as deficiencies.