Conceptual Framework
A Conceptual Framework is a guide for how a teacher education program is planned and organized. A coherent conceptual framework is a program’s platform, summarizing its philosophical views of the roles of teaching and learning, and its essential understandings of how students become teachers.
A conceptual framework gives an educational program its own distinct emphasis, a vision of the kind of program it wants to be and the characteristics of the teachers it hopes to develop. It simply describes for everyone what the program is all about.
The conceptual framework of the School of Education is Building and Bridging A Community of Learners. The organizing theme of learning communities focuses the attention of faculty and students on the essential nature of teaching and learning:
- How does community shape learning and achievement?
- What are the roles of successful learners and teachers?
- What social interactions are necessary for both learning and community?
- How is the definition of a learning community changing in an increasingly technological age?
- What is the relationship between the concept of learning community and the democratic ideal of American education?
For faculty at CSU Pueblo, the vision of quality education requires a learner-centered environment in which learning (not teaching) is at the core.
All learners will achieve in communities in which learning is publicly and constructively discussed, a positive climate surrounds all members, and support exists for scaffold all learners’ individual growth and development.
Inclusive, equitable communities require constant attention to the nature of relationships among teachers and students. CSU Pueblo students will be prepared to participate as learners and teachers in overlapping and expanding learning communities – from the university classroom to K-12 settings, the professional education community, distributed communities created by technology, and cultural, economic, and political communities of students and their families.
To become beginning teachers, students must change their perceptions of themselves as learners and as students of teaching. As CSU Pueblo students progress through the program, they will skillfully assume a variety of roles, including those of:
- master learners
- instructors
- collaborators
- apprentices
- models
- coaches
- colleagues
- mentors
