Education

In the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences .

Faculty
Minor in Education

The Department of Education builds on strong academic disciplines such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, biological and political sciences, political thought, and philosophy and is grounded in empirical and theoretical studies of educational practice in order to address education in diverse contexts. The department’s focus to meet societal demands for teachers, researchers, and learners is the Learning, Teaching, and Social Policy (LTSP) program, which includes the Cornell Teacher Education Program (CTE). This program concentrates on teacher education, agricultural science and physical science education, diversity, critical pedagogy, the study of school-age children and their families, and policy related to formal education. This program of study, largely at the graduate level, prepares leaders who will both engage in professional practice and improve educational processes through their scholarship and practice. Our undergraduate program leads to initial certification in agricultural science education. An undergraduate minor in education is also available for students across all colleges at Cornell. For the latest information on program developments, go to education.cornell.edu.

Learning, Teaching, and Social Policy (LTSP). This program is designed to foster the development of educational leaders, researchers, and practitioners who approach issues and challenges in education from multiple perspectives, and seek to construct an integrated knowledge base upon which the practice of teaching, learning, and social policy is based. The impacts of implementation and practice are explored for creating new theories, approaches, and policies to improve teaching, learning, and community life.

Drawing on the dynamic nature of teaching and learning, this program challenges students to create and apply research-based, critically reflective analysis of cognitive, intellectual, personal, social, moral, and institutional dimensions of learning, teaching, and educational policy in a variety of contexts and at multiple governance levels. Students engage in critically reflective practice to address pressing problems and issues in formal and non-formal educational contexts across a variety of national and cultural settings.

The program is philosophically grounded in the perspective that learning and teaching is a lifelong process vital to individual development, the development of democratic communities, and the implementation of democratic values in educational policy and practice. Context, gender, and social and economic diversity underlie the design and implementation of curriculum, teaching and learning theory, and social interactions and are lenses for examining educational practice, theory, and policy.

Faculty members and graduate students in research programs in LTSP engage in research that investigates factors that contribute to scientific and quantitative literacy; curriculum design and evaluation in science, mathematics, and agricultural science; effectiveness of teacher professional development; educational policy in rural schools; and sociomoral development, action, and reflective thought in schools and communities. Our mission is to contribute to an educated, global society of leaders and citizens who are prepared to respond to emerging social, technological, and scientific issues, with ethical and critically reflective judgment.

The Cornell Teacher Education (CTE) program is a unique interdisciplinary cohort-based program that certifies teachers for secondary teaching in agricultural science or science (biology, chemistry, earth science, or physics). Students in the CTE program develop a solid mastery of their content areas and an understanding of the issues in education, and interact with and learn from each other. Undergraduates accepted into the CTE program major in an agriculture or science field in any Cornell college complete a minor in education. With a CTE minor and a bachelor’s degree, students can complete the Master of Arts in Teaching in one year. CTE teachers are prepared as scholars of teaching and learning, able to help all their students achieve the scientific and quantitative literacy and ethical decision making skills needed for participation in a democracy.

Agricultural Science Education is taught at the middle and high school levels in New York State and nationally. Building on strong academic disciplines in the agricultural sciences, and with a solid grounding in the psychological, social, empirical, and theoretical bases of educational practice, the department offers a program that leads to professional certification in Agricultural Science Education. Undergraduates interested in teaching agriculture should major in agriscience and concentrate in education. The agriculture option in the Master of Arts in Teaching is offered under the Cornell Teacher Education umbrella.

Faculty

A. Wilson, chair (435 Kennedy Hall, (607) 255-2207); R. Caffarella, M. Constas, B. Crawford, T. Park, J. Perry, S. Peters, T. Richardson, D. Schrader, J. Sipple, D. Trumbull, T. Tucker, S. Villenas

Minor in Education:

The minor in education gives students a planned core of courses to provide them with an overview of education as a field. One option prepares students to move into the graduate segment of the CTE program. Other options provide preparation for admission into other graduate teacher certification programs or a background for professional venues such as extension, business, and industry. Any undergraduate student in the university may enroll in courses, subject to availability, required for the minor. Students who wish to pursue a minor in Education must complete and submit an application. Applications are available in 426 Kennedy Hall, the CALS Office of Academic Programs, or by e-mailing cu_teacher_ed@cornell.edu.