Program Design
Years 1, 2, and 3

Commitment  The Masters of Arts in Curriculum and Teaching is designed to facilitate the professional and personal growth of experienced educators who are committed to developing advanced professional expertise in curriculum and teaching. As informed, well-rounded professionals, these educators are prepared to assume leadership roles in their educational settings. MACT candidates are regarded as potential change agents in education, within and beyond the classroom.

Curriculum  The MACT program requires active learning and field-based inquiry, not merely "seat time" in university classrooms. Candidates reflect upon how their learning and experiences constitute their present beliefs and practices. MACT candidates examine educational policy and practice in increasingly complex, critical, and scholarly ways. These examinations are orchestrated through a spiraling curriculum where one set of learning experiences creates a foundation for the next.

Community  MACT candidates are admitted in summer and fall "cohorts." This enables educators from diverse and distant locations to become part of a community of scholars. The community is constituted over time as cohort members share experiences and ideas. Professional development and accomplishments are reported, studied, and celebrated by all.

Program Design

Professional Inquiry  The primary theme of the program is professional development. A focus on inquiry or research is expected and certainly appropriate for any graduate program. However, this intellectual focus is critical for practicing professionals who engage daily in complex work and are confronted with questions and problems of practice that cannot be solved easily, once and for all. This makes educators' work challenging, rewarding, and creative. The character of our work requires multiple approaches to inquiry that are responsive to an array of questions. Therefore, our program does not offer a single, traditional approach to inquiry, such as a research course which focuses primarily on quantitative measures or a master's thesis to be completed at the end of your program. Rather, we provide multiple opportunities for inquiry and require all students to develop a professional portfolio to document their inquiry and professional development over time.

We have designed a program that integrates inquiry into all of our courses, particularly the core courses, so that students can experience diverse forms and approaches to inquiry. Much of this inquiry is field-based, conducted by students in their classrooms and schools, and derived from students' own questions and professional goals.

A Spiraling Curriculum  The M.A.C.T. program's courses are organized into a spiraling curriculum that shifts in emphasis from one year to the next with integrated themes or curriculum strands running throughout the program. Most students complete their program of study in three years. Some pursue their courses at an accelerated rate, and others take up to five years (which is the university's limit) to complete their program.

Years 1, 2, & 3

Year 1 - Learning in Personal and Social Contexts    
     Courses taken during the first year focus on the self as learner or the reexamination of one's beliefs, teaching, and learning in personal and social contexts. For example, autobiographical and narrative inquiry are emphasized in several Year 1-courses, particularly in TE 807, the first core course in the program. Conceptual and analytic inquiry also are emphasizes in foundations courses, or those courses that focus on complex questions and perennial issues in education in social and historical contexts.

       During Year 1, students learn that there are many legitimate forms of inquiry that can help them explore a variety of questions of personal and professional interest. They learn that there is more than one way to think about and do "research." And they will begin to engage in inquiry across their courses and in their workplace settings in ways that are relevant to them as practitioners.

Year 2 - Inquiry into Teaching and Learning in Classrooms    
     The second year of study focuses on classroom-based inquiry so that students may intensively study the many dimensions of pedagogy and what/how students learn. TE 808 is the second core course in the program to help students design and anchor such inquiry. Subject-matter courses are taken in concentration where curriculum planning; K-12 students' learning; pedagogical strategies; and alternative forms of assessment are examined in depth. What it means to understand the disciplines--and then how best to teach and learn these subjects--are questions pursued during Year 2. Also, students attend closely to learner diversity and explore how academic achievement, social equality, justice, and building a learning community can be fostered in the classroom.

Year 3 - Professional Culture, Community, and Change    
     Year 3 focuses on becoming a competent, productive member of a professional community and involves inquiry at the program or school level beyond the individual classroom. To further develop practitioners' many roles and responsibilities as professionals, students take a capstone course: either TE 870 in curriculum development and deliberation, or TE 872 which focuses on research in learning to teach and mentoring novice teachers. After previous, intensive study of their own beliefs and practices, and those espoused and contested in the field, by the third year M.A. students are in a credible position to engage in informed decision making and collaborative inquiry with colleagues and other important stakeholders in education. Many of the issues encountered earlier in the program will surface problematically in Year 3 when trying to negotiate diverse interests in order to develop shared goals, policies, and practices in a productive, professional context.

Horizontal Themes    
     Each year, integrated themes are stressed to provide depth and breadth of study across students' coursework. These recurring themes are: teachers and teaching, learners and learning, contexts and communities, and disciplined modes of inquiry. The latter theme includes curriculum study, subject-matter investigations, and a variety of research perspectives and methods to use when students' pursue their questions of interest throughout the program.
     Depending on the year of study, one of the above four themes is apt to be figure across their courses, and the others ground. For example, during the first year, "learners and learning" and "context and communities" are apt to be prominent themes in students' coursework. While digging deeply into one's own autobiographical experiences, beliefs, and way(s) of learning and knowing in TE 807, students also are apt to be taking foundation courses and studying how scholars and diverse stakeholders in education may define learning, what it means to "know," what knowledge is of most worth, to whom, and with what consequences. Throughout their program of study, M.A. students actively seek integration and try to make connections across their courses in ways that acknowledge how these themes are related in education as well as to their own practice.