Catalog 2007-2008
Graduate School of Education and Counseling
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The Graduate School
Lewis & Clark's Graduate School of Education and Counseling provides graduate degree and licensure students with an educational experience that will prepare them to meet the complex challenges of professional life within a diverse and changing society.
We offer present and future practitioners the following:
- Critical knowledge, relevant skills, and practical experiences needed to reach their potential and succeed as leaders in their professions.
- Awareness of the broader social, economic, and political contexts in which professionals practice.
- Learning opportunities that integrate academic work with field-based experiences, communication, cross-fertilization of ideas between related fields, and understanding of the ethical issues integral to their professions.
To attain the aims of the graduate school, the Lewis & Clark educational community has identified nine areas in which our students will develop competencies: learning environments, content knowledge, teaching approaches, connection to community, educational resources, assessment, research and reflection, leadership and collaboration, and professional life. What follows are the guiding principles and the knowledge bases for each.
Through the development of trusting relationships, candidates from the Teacher Education, Educational Leadership, School Counseling, and School Psychology programs at Lewis & Clark will
- Create democratic learning communities in which caring, equity, social justice, and inclusion are practiced and diverse perspectives supported. (Learning environments)
- Integrate fundamental and emergent components of disciplinary knowledge in ways that extend learners' experience and enhance their own and students' capacity to solve problems. (Content knowledge)
- Engage students and school personnel in meaningful learning experiences responsive to individual differences, interests, developmental levels, and cultural contexts. (Teaching approaches)
- Design educational activities that cultivate connections between learners and their communities and region. (Connection to community)
- Incorporate a wide range of teaching and technological resources from the school and community into experiences that support learning. (Educational resources)
- Assess, document, and advocate for the successful learning of all students and school stakeholders. (Assessment)
- Adopt habits of personal and scholarly reflection that examine professional practice and lead to systemic renewal. (Research and reflection)
- Lead and collaborate with others to plan, organize, and implement educational practices and programs that confront the impact of societal and institutional barriers to academic success and personal growth. (Leadership and collaboration)
- Pursue a professional identity that demonstrates respect for diverse peoples, ideas, and cultures. (Professional life)
Diversity within the intellectual, linguistic, gender, ethno-cultural, regional, aesthetic, physical, and ethical domains produces abundant promise--as well as challenges--that schools must address. The strength of democratic learning environments is their ability to prepare citizens who can sustain a public culture that honors both difference and commonality. We prepare professionals to lead, teach, and provide support services to students in ways that promote the cultivation of caring; the development of empathy and ethical reasoning; an increasing understanding of and commitment to social justice; fair, inclusive, and educationally responsive approaches to all students; equity in school practices and in the treatment of all persons; and the recognition, exploration, and support of diverse perspectives within the classroom, the school, and the world at large.
Teaching and technological resources should support and improve the teaching and learning of faculty and students. School and community professionals need to view resources in relation to how they serve the user and this goal. We recognize and address the importance of preparing our students to enter their professions with adequate skills for using information and technology, an ability to critically evaluate that technology and its implementation in a given school, and a commitment to use these resources in the service of purposes and goals, rather than as ends in themselves.
The graduate school enjoys ongoing relationships with hundreds of organizations, including schools, agencies, clinics, nonprofit organizations, and legislative bodies. The curriculum reflects the theories, techniques, research, modes of application, and national movements within each professional field. Faculty employ effective instructional models that engage students in critical thinking, creative problem solving, collaboration, and inquiry. Adjunct faculty members who are active practitioners join the regular faculty in providing important links between theory and practice.
The Graduate School of Education and Counseling enrolls approximately 900 students in its degree and licensure programs each year. Many students are new to the study of the professions while others are experienced practitioners. To meet their diverse needs, classes are offered days, evenings, and weekends and are located on campus, off campus, and at work sites. Students may pursue their degrees on either a part-time or full-time basis. Some program specifics apply.