Arcadia University has received the Innovative Teacher Prep to Practice Grant for $96,208 to revise the Secondary Education curriculum. 

The revisions will incorporate PDE’s new Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Educator competencies into the curriculum of Arcadia’s School of Education. This will help make the program more welcoming and effective for students who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), particularly those who are working to become teachers in Pennsylvania, said Dr. Marc Brasof, associate professor of Education at Arcadia University, co-director of the Social Action and Justice Education (SAJE) Fellowship program, and director of Secondary Social Studies and English Education at Arcadia. 

“This curriculum redesign will also assist us in effectively preparing all our pre-service educators to be ready to teach and to lead in ways that support students in PreK-12 to live and work in an ever-changing and diverse society,” said Dr. Priscilla Jeter-Iles, assistant professor, Field Experiences and outreach director and co-director of SAJE. 

“We plan on revising all of our courses and field work to be more aligned with these competencies, which is connected more broadly to the social justice work in SAJE and the mission of the School of Education,” said Dr. Brasof. “Our work needs to be completed by this December. The program is submitted to the Faculty Senate for approval in spring 2024 and will launch in fall 2024.”

“Two other exciting components is that the grant provides support to deepen our partnership with schools and districts,” added Brasof. “We plan to meaningfully incorporate pre-service educators from the Social Action and Justice Education (SAJE) as part of this revision process, which will not only sharpen our focus on our up-and-coming educators and their world perspectives, but support the development of themselves as change agents. SAJE is an important initiative in the School of Education to recruit, retain, train, and employ the next generation of BIPOC educators.”

The School of Education is partnering with the Center for Black Educator Development, the Center for Antiracist Scholarship, Advocacy, and Action (CASAA), which is led by Dr. Christopher Varlack, Perceptions Unlimited, and secondary education teachers from Abington Friends, Building 21, Mastery Charter, Cheltenham School District, and the Science Leadership Academy with research on revising these courses. 

About the School of Education

The mission of the School of Education is to ensure that students and practitioners engage in rigorous and personally meaningful experiences that cultivate creative and critical understandings related to the processes of teaching and learning. It is committed to providing philosophical, theoretical, technological and instructional frameworks to promote exemplary inclusive practice, scholarly inquiry and social justice advocacy across diverse educational contexts. 
To learn more about or to apply to Arcadia’s School of Education, visit arcadia.edu/education.