Teaching and Leadership
Preparing Teachers
The basic purpose of the teacher preparation programs is to prepare educators who are able and willing to: promote the active learning of all students; to challenge and equip every student to meet standards of excellence; to respect and empower students as individual learners; and to serve as principled leaders and advocates for students in their schools, communities, and profession.
Preparing School Leaders
Three basic principles guide the development of Syracuse University's program in Educational Leadership:
- Our programs seek to prepare educators for leadership in schools where continuous learning and support for the learning of others is emphasized
- We define as leaders those who make such learning possible
- We reflect these first two principles in the ways we organize and conduct our programs, through active engagement, rigorous scholarship and dialogue, and close connections between the University and the field.
The programs reflect these principles by requiring students to confront the demands of providing leadership for learning in both field and academic settings and by expecting them to integrate the insights afforded by each. These objectives can be meant by cultivating closer connections between the university and the field; through active involvement of field leaders in the admissions, advising, instruction, and assessment processes; and through intense involvement of students in a variety of research, development, inquiry, and service in actual school settings.
This design is a definition of educational leadership that includes exercises by teachers and other school professionals as well as administrators; which requires our graduate students to grapple with a variety of theoretical and policy perspectives; and challenges them to identify and address the tensions inherent in different ways of understanding the purpose and process of education.
Preparing Researchers and Teacher Educators
The basic purpose of our doctoral programs is to prepare teacher educators to conduct scholarship in curriculum, instruction, school leadership and to preserve on-going professional development for teachers and leaders.