Teacher Education Conference
Teacher Education Conference
The FirstSchool team and UNC School of Education faculty are looking forward to the forth-coming conference on pre-service teacher education. The conference theme is Coming Together From Worlds Apart: Learning from our Differences [1] and will take place March 29 – 30, 2012 at the Carolina Inn, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The aims of the conference reflect key principles of FirstSchool, a collaborative inquiry-oriented approach to the successful transition of children from home to school, from pre-Kindergarten through third grade. This conference extends FirstSchool’s commitment to social justice and collaborative inquiry to the challenges of pre-service teacher education.
This event will be distinct from a traditional conference in several ways. The invitation-only event is motivated by the historic divide between scholarship in early, elementary and special education; the marginalization of early childhood in the teacher education discourse, and the continued ideological debates among scholars within these groups about what teacher education is all about. Participants from leading teacher education programs across the U.S. have been invited to engage in deliberate exchanges of perspectives and programmatic differences related to the preparation of teachers from pre-K through 3rd grade. Participants will also identify and commit to working on key policy recommendations, potential university partnerships, joint publications and an interdisciplinary research agenda for the reform of pre-service teacher education.
If you have questions regarding the Working Conference, please contact: Rebecca New (919) 962-7844 rebecca.new@unc.edu
If you have questions regarding travel arrangements or hotel accommodations, please contact:
Jenille Morgan (919) 966-9153 jenille.morgan@unc.edu or Barbara Lowery (919) 962-7321 barbara.lowery@unc.edu.
[1] With thanks to the article by: Moss, Pamela A., Phillips, D.C., Erickson, Frederick D., Ploden, Robert E., Lather, Patti A., & Schneider, Barbara L. (2009). Learning from our differences: A dialogue across perspectives on quality in education research. Educational Researcher, 38(7), pp. 501-517.