Education

We strive to prepare knowledgeable, creative, culturally responsive teachers who foster the development and growth of learners by engaging them in worthwhile learning experiences framed by inquiry and meaningful assessment.

Note: As of Fall 2021, the Education Department will not be accepting new cohorts of students to Teacher Certification Programs housed in the Education Department (English, Math, Science, Social Studies, and Foreign Languages). The Music Education program will continue to offer the BME with certification.

Programs

For students enrolled prior to Fall 2021:

Minors

For all students:

Featured course

Jump to level: All Education courses

by level: 100 • 200 • 300 • 400

EDUC-368 Motivation in School and Society
Motivation - a popular touchstone in successful classrooms, in the workplace, and in life. In this course, we explore concepts and theories of motivation through TED talks, best-selling popular psychology books, and peer-reviewed educational and psychological research articles. We examine motivation through multiple theoretical and cultural frameworks. Students develop and evaluate interventions to support motivation in settings ranging from the classroom to the workplace.
EDUC-377 Education Policy & Politics
Charters. Choice. Testing. Standards. Equity. Over the past three decades public opinion has coalesced around the idea that our public schools are failing and desperately in need of reform. How much truth is there in these assertions? This course explores the implications of public school reform policy choices, focusing especially on the way reformers have framed the debate to their advantage. Special attention is paid to teacher quality, urban education, school choice, testing, and other issues raised by reform advocates.
EDUC-264 Education for Social Change
This course explores how schooling has made us the people that we are today, and asks if formal education has prepared us for the challenges that we face in this age of globalization. The course assaults the status quo nature of education and challenges us to imagine a pedagogy that is central to social change. This interrogation of education is not meant to raze the entire historical edifice to the ground, but rather to lead us to critically reflect on the far too frequent manifestations of dull educational processes that produce conformists, rather than inspire us to creatively overturn structures of inequities.

Education Department Programs

The Department of Education at Gettysburg College facilitates student inquiry into the nature of education from social, cultural, philosophical, historical, and psychological perspectives and encourages students to pursue collaborative, creative solutions to educational problems framed by careful reflection on the nature of education and teaching, broadly conceived.

Learn more about our Programs

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Our distinguished faculty’s publications

 

News

 

Education Department Spotlight

praxis exams
Richard Huy ’16 earns UChicago Outstanding Educator Award
praxis exams
Feeding curiosity: Ja’Nai Harris ’16 pens children’s book as love letter to her elementary school students
praxis exams
A call-to-action for global citizenship from Fulbright recipient Anthony Wagner ’17
praxis exams
Our Praxis II pass rate—Praxis II is the content-area exam all prospective teachers must pass prior to initial certification—is 100%.

Read More Outcomes

Katie Durr ’14

Art Therapist

Durr currently works as an art therapist at the Center for Autism in Philadelphia,PA.

At the Center for Autism in Philadelphia, Katie Durr ’14 makes a difference in the lives of children who are visibly suffering each day. She has witnessed non-verbal children learn to speak and violent children learn to safely request attention—actions that were previously considered impossible by medical professionals. “I have gotten so many crying phone calls of people thanking me because their child has learned to look at them, or say thank you to them, and a million other little things in between,” Durr said. “Those moments make the hard parts worth it.”

In addition to her full-time job at the Center for Autism, Durr also works at the Creative Healing Center, where she is a primary art therapist for teens suffering from trauma and other mental health difficulties.

Being an art therapist was a dream that came true because of the interdisciplinary studies program at Gettysburg College. Her personalized major, “Therapeutic Visual Arts Studies,” gave her exposure to classes she would take in post-undergraduate education. “I believe that Gettysburg gave me a leg up over my [graduate school] classmates, some of whom had never written a research paper before,” Durr said. “I am not sure I can even put into words how grateful I am to Gettysburg for making me the person I am today.”