Philosophy
Faculty, administration and staff at Manhattanville are united in a belief that teachers and school leaders who are ethically and socially responsible are best prepared to create a caring and supportive environment in which all children can learn. Our concept of responsibility is based on our belief in the inherent worth and potential of each individual student and our obligation to support social, emotional and academic learning in each student, regardless of race, ethnic origin, socio-economic background, gender or ability.
Further, we believe that the profession of teaching, at its best, must be viewed in the context of community. A teacher or school leader who is a life-long learner has a continuously expanding sphere of interest that grows to incorporate the child, the classroom, the school, the neighborhood, the larger local community, the nation and the world. A teacher or school leader who is a life-long learner continues to deepen his or her understanding of the meaning of community and make a greater number of connections among meanings.
We envision a collaborative community comprised of liberal arts faculty, teacher education faculty, and local school districts. Our college faculty provides candidates in our teacher education programs with a firm liberal arts background. Within the School of Education faculty collaborate in curriculum and policy development. Faculty works with school districts to provide opportunities for field/clinical experiences and leadership internships. Advisors work closely with cooperating teachers to supervise and nurture pre-service teachers and school leaders. As a result of these partnerships, we broaden our community of adjunct professors, consultants, and guest speakers for our teacher education programs.
We prize our established and developing partnerships with schools in surrounding counties. It is important that we continue to build links with school districts and local public and independent schools in order to share our instructional expertise and at the same time keep the School in touch with the real-life classroom needs of youngsters and their teachers. Our teacher education program benefits from partnerships in a variety of ways: there is a sharing of skills and strategies between classroom teachers, school leaders, and college faculty; there are bridges built between practice and theory; greater sensitivity of higher education faculty to the daily needs of classroom teachers and children; effective professional growth of classroom teachers through action research with higher education faculty; and innovative laboratory sites for field/clinical experiences and leadership internships that serve as models for other schools and other districts.
It is appropriate to identify a philosophical model upon which Manhattanville faculty base their professional work. We are deeply committed to a life of learning. As teachers, researchers and thinkers, we wish to maintain academic and professional integrity by keeping our minds open to new ideas and theories, to results of research, and to what is meant by best practice. We wish, therefore, to be guided by a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional model, rather than a single theory.
We are not, however, without models and theories to provide us with philosophical guidance and support. We synthesize the works of (Bloom, 1956; Dewey, 1938; Gardner, 1984; Darling-Hammond, 1999; and Levine, 2002) to guide our practice in the preparation of our Manhattanville candidates. Our model is both learner-centered and learning-centered. Together these theorists address individual needs, talents and enhance the concept of in-depth learning.
We support the philosophy that children have a right to be taught by teachers who are competent and qualified to understand children’s academic, social, physical, and emotional needs (National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 1996). We strive to ensure all future educators a high quality teacher preparation program based upon knowledge, dispositions, and national performance standards (National Board on Professional Teaching Standards, 2001).
Regarding how children learn, several models inform us (Piaget, 1926; Bruner, 1990; Bronfenbrenner, (1990); Vygotsky, 1978). Constructivism is perhaps the most powerful model. We believe that learning is constructed by the student, influenced by developmental level, prior knowledge, meaningfulness of the learning task, communication with peers and adults, and reflection. Students learn better when they are engaged in real life self-constructed experiences that result in transfer of learning and improved retention (Jensen, 2000). (Dewey)
We believe that teachers facilitate learning through careful selection, guiding, pacing and scaffolding of learning tasks, guided by formal and informal assessment. Although we believe that there are a number of valuable ways of thinking and knowing, we are particularly eager to foster literacy skills of our candidates and, by extension, those of their students. We find relevance in recent developments in brain research and brain-based learning theories. Finally, we believe that teachers teach by modeling the knowledge, skills and dispositions that they wish to develop in their students.