Department of Teaching
Learning and Educational Studies
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5276 USA
(269) 387-3465
Mission Statement and Vision
Our Mission
To explore and advance what education can do to enhance the flourishing of all persons and contribute to an increasingly just, diverse, and harmonious society.
Our Vision
TLES faculty and staff honor the following commitments:
- Preparing teachers who are devoted to life-long learning, and who embrace and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in educational settings at all levels
- Analyzing all forms of systematic injustice, discrimination, and harmful bias that persist in education, and advancing ways in which such social evils can be reduced and eliminated in practice
- Examining the kinds of good, both personal and collective, that are achievable via education, and how such goods are realized in practice
- Engaging in life-long learning in service of meeting our students’ multi-faceted needs
- Providing students with strong, current content knowledge and pedagogy to integrate into their work as professional educators
- Contributing critical insights and perspectives that bear upon educational policymaking at all levels to promote education as a vital public good
- Conducting research that illuminates vital features of the inherently contentious and complicated nature of education, and of the social-political and cultural context in which educational practice takes place
- Building and sustaining strong, productive, and mutually beneficial relationships with educators, schools in our community, and parent constituents, as well as with other institutions of higher learning