Skidmore Education Studies Department Mission Statement
Introduction
The Education Studies Department (EDS) at Skidmore College offers courses, a minor, and a major examining schooling as a social and cultural institution. We see education as the process of acquiring and expanding knowledge, skills and values. For students pursuing elementary teacher certification in New York State (grades 1-6), the department provides a program that integrates a broad liberal arts foundation with professional preparation for teaching in a range of classroom settings serving a diverse community of learners.
The EDS program and its courses are grounded in three over-arching principles.
1. Education is a path towards a more socially just society.
2. Teaching and learning are place-based, rooted in the land, history, culture, laws and policies where an educator works and students learn.
3. Teaching is the application of theory to practice, while also developing theory through practice; therefore, learning to teach should be grounded in clinical practice experiences.
We infuse our coursework with the understanding that teaching is a political act. Grounded in social justice pedagogy, our courses challenge students to examine systemic barriers, question power and take multiple perspectives. We believe that educators should create learning experiences that honor complex and intersectional identities, including social class, race, culture, ethnicity, nationality, religious (non)affiliation, language(s), gender, sexuality, age, and disability. We emphasize the responsibility of all educators to teach disabled students and multilingual learners, and to create inclusive schools where all children have access to meaningful, high-quality learning experiences. Our program fosters classrooms rooted in joy, care, and belonging, where every student feels valued and empowered. Using culturally sustaining frameworks, we prepare educators to take social action and equip their students with the tools to do the same — shaping the world around them to amplify historically marginalized voices and advance equity for communities that have been historically excluded.
The social foundations of education provide an interdisciplinary framework for examining education through historical, sociological, anthropological, economic, and political perspectives. Building on this foundation, we emphasize place-based pedagogies that help students explore the connections between local geographies (e.g., urban, suburban, rural) and non-local perspectives. This approach prepares future educators to design meaningful, integrated learning experiences that attend to the socio-cultural environment of a school and allows future educators to adapt to new teaching environments throughout their careers. By highlighting the importance of place, we develop educator-researchers who systematically collect data on their students, schools, and communities to inform teaching practices that are simultaneously responsive to their unique context and our increasingly global society.
We connect our theoretically informed coursework with immersive clinical practice experiences to engage our teacher candidates in critically examining pedagogical approaches. Through placements in our early childhood lab school and regional first through sixth grade classrooms, we emphasize concrete experiences that inform an understanding of play-based and developmentally appropriate teaching strategies. Our program ensures that teacher candidates work closely with mentor teachers to develop the confidence, adaptability, and expertise necessary to meet the diverse needs of students. We support future educators in sustaining their mental well-being and that of their future students. Our commitment extends beyond the classroom, as we cultivate strong partnerships with local schools, teachers, community stakeholders, and school leaders. These collaborations provide opportunities for candidates to engage with the broader educational community, ensuring they enter the profession as well-prepared, reflective teacher leaders ready to make a lasting impact.