 |
Teacher Education: Integrating Moral Education into the Preparation of Urban Teachers
This project is supported by one of three grants from the Character Education
Partnership as part of their initiative, “Future Educators for Character:
A call to Action for Teacher Education programs.” The UIC project
is intended to integrate preparation to address moral education throughout
the undergraduate elementary education certification program. Social cognitive
domain theory serves as
the organizing theoretical framework for the moral education component
of teacher education. However, all of the moral education related activities
are designed to fit within the broader social justice orientation of our
teacher education program.
Students are first introduced to issues of moral and social development in their course Child Development for Elementary Education. As a part of this course students learn to construct moral and social values lessons employing regular class materials supplied by Chicago Public School teachers. The individual lessons are returned to the classroom teachers for their use, and also become a part of the UIC students’ WEB based professional portfolios.
In subsequent courses, students’ knowledge of children’s moral and social development and teaching practices is deepened through fieldwork and related courses. Our goal is to have students complete the teacher education major with a functional knowledge and skill level to integrate moral education into the regular processes of classroom instruction and classroom management rather than as an add-on activity employing external commercial programs.
As part of the on-going activities of the project, we were visited this past year by MARILYN WATSON who worked with us on issues of “Developmental Discipline.”