Our undergraduate degrees ensure that students meet Undergraduate Degree-Level Expectations (UDLEs) by articulating Program Learning Outcomes for each degree program. Both the Bachelor of Education (BEd) and the Bachelor of Arts (Educational Studies) have UDLEs embedded in curriculum.
Bachelor of Education (BEd)
1. Ethical Stance
The Bachelor of Education program is designed to help students understand their ethical, legal, and professional responsibilities in their relationship with students, parents/guardians/caregivers, colleagues, community partners, the environment and the public.
Graduates of the Bachelor of Education degree will have developed:
- an awareness of the transformative and disruptive power of learning;
- an awareness of the limits of knowledge and personal responsibility;
- the ability to express their commitment to students’ well-being and learning through the positive influence, professional judgment, integrity, and empathy;
- a commitment to diversity, inclusion, understanding, acceptance and social responsibility in dialogue with local, national, and global communities.
2. Curriculum
The Bachelor of Education program is designed to help students to consider critically the values, assumptions, and qualities that structure educational debates and research that contextualize the creation, selection and sequencing of knowledge as curriculum. They will gain the knowledge to allow them to make defensible curricular decisions.
Graduates of the Bachelor of Edcuation degree will have developed:
- an understanding of ways of knowing and how knowledge is made, learned, and used;
- the capacity to engage meaningfully with questions of curriculum, perspective, and the dynamics of learning;
- the ability to recognize the values embedded in educational trends and discourses;
- the capacity to work with disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge;
- critical engagement with Ontario curriculum and policy documents;
- the ability to locate and organize resources for teaching that are distinguished by the range of perspectives they represent, their relevance to the developmental needs of learners, and their relation to learners’ histories and interests;
- a critical understanding of the dynamics of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, culture, ability/disability, and structures of privilege in knowing and learning;
- the capacity to theorize learning in complex terms.
3. Pedagogy
The Bachelor of Education program is designed to enable students to personalize insights into the craft of teaching through the integration of theory, knowledge, and skills into a working philosophy.
Graduates of the Bachelor of Education degree will have developed:
- a repertoire of teaching practices that are responsive to the needs of diverse learners;
- effective individual and collaborative planning strategies;
- a wide range of assessment and evaluation methods;
- interdisciplinary curriculum applications;
- the ability to plan, deliver, and assess learning engagements appropriate to students;
- the ability to develop and maintain a positive, inclusive, and engaging learning environment;
- the ability to articulate curricular and pedagogical intent to students.
4. Autonomy
The Bachelor of Education program is designed to enable students to become critical, self-directed, engaged, curious, and developing professionals.
Graduates of the Bachelor of Education degree will have developed:
- a sound understanding of the relations among knowledge, curriculum, pedagogy, ethics and professional practice;
- the ability to observe, discern, critique, assess and act accordingly;
- a research disposition and the capacity to inquire into their lives and interests as professionals including the importance of the teacher’s larger collegial context, i.e., educational reform, community and national debates about education, teachers’ federations, teacher research, in-service and workshops, professional organizations, journals, and conferences;
- an understanding of the importance of reading widely and engaging with perspectives on education that extend one’s understanding;
- the ability to articulate curricular and pedagogical intent, orientations, and ethical stance to professional colleagues.
5. Worldliness
The Bachelor of Education program asks students to engage with global realities and issues with an awareness of how their work as teachers is connected to the project of living well together.
Graduates of the Bachelor of Education degree will have developed:
- an understanding of local and global considerations of how community is made in classrooms;
- an awareness of the range of cultures within a school;
- an awareness of community-based organizations, their advocacy and educational missions;
- a knowledge of a wide range of cultural concerns and cultural differences;
- a sense of a child’s or an adolescent’s everyday life in community;
- an ability to create curricular study focused on questions of community and culture;
- an interest in sensitizing the self to cultural and community perspectives in terms of history and present preoccupations;
- a conceptual and critical understanding of the dynamics that allow or constrain friendship, affection, and belonging such as race, class, sex, gender, disability, nation, generation, popular culture, language, and home;
- the ability to create curricular study focused on questions of environmental sustainability;
- the ability to articulate curricular, pedagogical intent, and ethical stance to parents, caregivers, community members and a broader public.
Bachelor of Arts, Educational Studies
1. Depth and Breadth of Knowledge
- a developed knowledge and critical understanding of the key concepts, methodologies, theoretical approaches and assumptions in educational studies
- a developed understanding of many of the major areas of study within educational studies, including how these areas are informed by disciplines such as social work, sociology, linguistics, equity studies, community studies, work and society
- a developed ability to:
- gather, review, evaluate and interpret information; and
- compare the merits of alternate hypotheses or creative options within different educational studies social, political and pedagogical contexts
- a developed, detailed knowledge of and experience in research in educational studies in general and within specific learning engagement contexts in particular
- developed critical thinking and analytical skills inside and outside educational studies
- the ability to apply learning from educational studies to a wide variety of situations
2. Knowledge of Methodologies
- an understanding of methods of enquiry and creative activity in educational studies to enable the student to:
- evaluate the appropriateness of different approaches to solving problems related to theoretically and empirically defensible ideas and strategies in education
- devise and sustain arguments relating to pedagogy using these methods; and
- describe and comment upon particular aspects of research and scholarship relating to educational studies
3. Application of Knowledge
- the ability to review, present and critically evaluate qualitative and quantitative information to:
- develop lines of argument;
- make sound judgments in accordance with the major theories, concepts and methods of educational studies;
- apply underlying concepts, principles, and techniques of analysis, both within and outside educational studies;
- use this knowledge in considering issues related to pedagogical provisioning or specific educational problematics and situations; and
- the ability to use a range of established techniques to:
- initiate and undertake critical evaluation of arguments, assumptions, abstract concepts and information;
- propose solutions;
- frame appropriate questions for the purpose of solving a problem;
- solve a problem, or create a pedagogical approach/curriculum that is sensitive to context; and
- the ability to make critical use of scholarly reviews and primary sources
4. Communication Skills
- the ability to communicate information, arguments, and analyses accurately and reliably, orally and in writing to a range of audiences, adapting material in terms of genres and modalities used to suit different audiences and purposes of communication
5. Awareness of Limits of Knowledge
- an understanding of the limits to their own knowledge and ability, and an appreciation of the uncertainty, ambiguity and limits to knowledge and how this might influence analyses and interpretations
6. Autonomy and Professional Capacity
- qualities and transferable skills necessary for further study, employment, community involvement and other activities requiring:
- the exercise of initiative, personal responsibility and accountability in both educational studies contexts;
- working effectively with others;
- decision-making in complex educational contexts
- the ability to manage their own learning in changing circumstances, both within and outside the educational studies and to select an appropriate program of further study; and
- behaviour consistent with academic integrity and social responsibility