Elementary Teacher Education Program, University of Washington

ELTEP’s vision is to foster early career teachers’ capacity to integrate richly contextualized knowledge of culture, community, and identity with pedagogical and content knowledge and practice.

We acknowledge that education cannot be reduced to disciplinary parameters but must include attention to power, history, self-identity and the possibility of collective agency.  As such, we take an alliance building approach with families, schools, and communities to collaboratively transform inequitable institutional practices.

Fostering early career teachers’ capacities and alliance building includes:

●    A social justice orientation which entails critical self-reflection and action to address inequities in communities, schools, and classrooms, shaped by race and socioeconomic status as well as by gender, sexual orientation, language, immigration status, (dis) ability, and religion.

●    Systems and structures that support the complex work of teaching through collaborative inquiry in partnership with schools, communities, and families.

●    Social, emotional as well as intellectual dimensions of equitable teaching and learning.

Developing and enacting this vision requires generous, deliberative, participatory on-going conversations that acknowledge and honor the multiplicity of expertise across boundaries.