Equity-centered pedagogy

School of Education (SOE) teacher education program embraces an EQUITY-centered approach to education as we strive to support teachers as change agents in pursuit of a more socially just world. We challenge our future teachers to see themselves as engaged scholars who think critically and creatively as they work to enhance student learning by connecting schools and communities for educational justice. We endorse question-driven learning, where curriculum emerges through the formulation and investigation of critical questions about our world, and where our future teachers see themselves as co-creators of curriculum with students and community members.
Our approach to teaching and learning encourages future teachers to actively challenge injustices in schools and society and to work collaboratively with their students to imagine alternatives to current school practices and policies that reproduce inequities in our society. We believe it is necessary for future teachers to value and understand multiple perspectives and approaches to teaching and learning and to see the work of teaching as an intellectual and ethical project. We believe that teachers should integrate critical theories and practices with the aim of developing inclusive pedagogies that seek to fundamentally change existing school systems and practices that often exclude the most marginalized. Therefore, our program seeks to maintain a caring inclusive environment where all future teachers and their students feel safe and supported in our community.
Our goal in the SOE is to prepare teachers who understand their work as transformative praxis embedded in complex social and cultural contexts connected to political, economic, and historical realities. For this reason, we prepare future teachers to develop and implement student and youth-centered pedagogies that recognize and support the democratic potential of students and their communities. We aim to prepare future teachers in the SOE who support culturally and linguistically diverse learners and who see themselves as advocates, allies, and leaders for justice in their communities.
To that end, we offer our equity-based conceptual framework:
Engaged scholars
Question-driven learning
Understands multiple perspectives
Inclusive environments
Transformative praxis
Youth-centered pedagogies

The Department of Teaching and Learning supports an equity-centered pedagogy, as represented by our conceptual framework. Please write a 500-word statement that articulates why an equity-centered pedagogy will be important for you as a future teacher. In your response, please refer to at least three of the bold-faced words/phrases in the conceptual framework.