The purpose of this course is to help equip teachers with a repertoire of pedagogically proven and research-based teaching methods that will ensure them of their own cutting edge pedagogical content knowledge. The course is based on and exemplifies the Deweyan principle of learning through experience, whereby teachers experiment with and experience (much as their students will) the teaching methods and model lessons that will become part of their own repertoire for classroom instruction.

Thus the course is conducted characteristically as workshops or demonstration lessons, followed by reflections on principles and theory that inform the teaching practices. Close attention will also be given to anticipated problems and methods of assessing student learning outcomes. The course is designed to encourage reflective, creative, and independent thinking on the part of a teacher, and professionally informed actions that follow from reflection. Hence the course insists on attending to the theory and principles behind every demonstrated practice, so that a teacher may adapt demonstrated practices to a range of different classes and contexts while remaining faithful to the principles and values that form the philosophical basis for the teacher’s practice.

Participants who complete each course will earn an official certificate of course completion from Columbia University, Teachers College.