The curricula and educational experiences designed for candidates at NCE grow out of our long-standing philosophy advocating for social justice and embracing diversity. Our Conceptual Framework honors this tradition directly by stating that we are, “A professional community advocating for all learners.” The NCE community celebrates the complexity of diversity. Furthermore, because many of these differences relate to the inability or unwillingness of the mainstream education system to address or acknowledge these circumstances, to speak honestly of diversity is to address social justice issues. Our commitment to social justice is a commitment not only to respect diverse cultures, but also to work for meaningful social change. This, in turn, leads to pedagogical practices that engage candidates in educational dialogs in which their own social, historical, political, and cultural contexts are acknowledged and welcomed.

As a result of our strong commitment to diversity, we took careful note of the weaknesses cited in our 1999 review, and significant positive changes have occurred to strengthen the college’s long-standing commitment to honoring diversity and promoting social justice. We have successfully recruited diverse faculty and candidates, and created broader field experiences that allow candidates to interact with diverse learners. Our candidates develop knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to create instruction that is differentiated to meet the needs of diverse learners.

STD. 4, ELEM. 1: DESIGN, IMPLEMENTATION, AND EVALUATION OF CURRICULUM
Initial and advanced programs are designed, implemented, and evaluated to help candidates demonstrate the knowledge, dispositions, and skills needed to meet the needs of diverse learners. Curriculum, field experience and clinical practice are designed based on well-developed knowledge bases for, and conceptualizations of, diversity and inclusion so that candidates can apply them effectively in schools.

Candidates are expected to develop knowledge, skills, and dispositions related to diversity according to the values articulated in our Conceptual Framework, and state and national standards (Exhibit Room [ER]: standard alignment matrices, assessment reports, SPA reports, and state addenda). These include:

1) The NCE Conceptual Framework and Outcomes
2) INTASC Principle 3 and Illinois Professional Teaching Standard (IPTS) 3: The teacher understands how students differ in approaches to learning and creates instructional opportunities adapted to diverse learners
3) SPA standards
4) Illinois State Board of Education content standards and special education standards for all teachers incorporated into the IPTS.

Additionally, for initial certification, all candidates must meet, as a part of their general education preparation, a requirement for least one course in Global Studies (cultures and traditions of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, or Indigenous Peoples of the World). For many of our candidates, however, their first exposure to diversity in the curriculum is an historical perspective in FND 504/ ELE315 where they study the history and philosophy of education in the United States. All candidates also take either a child development course, EPS500, or a learning theory course, ESP510/EPS301, (or both), in which they examine diverse ways students learn. Candidates in initial programs or those in other certification programs who have not had such a course previously learn how to meet the needs of exceptional children and adolescents in SPE500/300, as required by Illinois law. Teacher candidates in advanced programs learn how to reflect upon their own practices to improve the achievement of all learners in their own classrooms.

The Educational Leadership program includes courses in curriculum administration for an increasingly diverse society, EDL552, and administrative issues for pluralistic schools, EDL604. Reading Specialists learn about multicultural literature in RLL528. Candidates in the Educational Psychology program study diversity in learning and development in a sequence of courses (EPS 507; EPS517; EPS541; EPS539; EPS540; EPS562a-d). Candidates in the Curriculum & Instruction/ESL and Bilingual and in IDS take CIL 531, a course in cross cultural education (ER: University Course Outlines).

NCE is committed to a college-wide approach to diversity. Therefore, in addition to the courses cited above, we have infused diversity themes into the entire curriculum through our program approval and review process, which ensures knowledge, skills, and dispositions related to diversity are articulated, enacted, and evaluated in all programs. The NCE program review and approval process (ER: Curriculum Council Guidelines) and course approval and review process (ER: Graduate Council Guidelines) require a clear articulation of the knowledge bases, professional standards, and conceptualizations of diversity and inclusion as they are implemented in programs and courses. For complete information on the curriculum development process, see the Exhibit Room.

NCE and NLU processes for curriculum design and evaluation are articulated and consistent. As the oldest and largest of NLU’s colleges, NCE’s core values are well represented in the NLU’s academic planning process. Thus, candidates who enter NCE from CAS have already begun to develop knowledge, skills, and dispositions consonant with NCE’s Conceptual Framework (ER: Academic Planning Handbook).

In our college-wide assessment system, candidates demonstrate their growing understanding of diversity and ability to enhance learning for all students through a variety of performance assessments. Artifacts that capture candidate knowledge, skills, and dispositions include: classroom observation projects, case studies of individual learners, lessons including strategies for adapting for individual learners, assessments of prior knowledge and experience, classroom inquiry projects, philosophy of practice papers, and analyses of curriculum from different perspectives (ER:Livetext - sample portfolios).

The evidence for how effectively we accomplish our goals in relationship to helping candidates develop the knowledge, skills and dispositions to help all students learn is elicited through various assessment processes and fed back into course and program development through our assessment system described in Standard 2 and the field experience opportunities and requirements described in Standard 3. More importantly, faculty use assessment data to provide counseling and feedback on ways to strengthen needed knowledge, skills, and dispositions (ER: Livetext - Program Assessment Reports).

Our explicit focus on social justice requires a strong focus on how we and our candidates implement curricula effectively in schools. Effective implementation must address the learning processes we enact and engender. Our monthly diversity discussions have addressed ways diversity is manifest in our and our candidates’ teaching and learning (ER: diversity discussion documents).

In addition, engaging with curricula written from diverse viewpoints, using multiple inquiry methods, and trying different epistemological stances encourages conversations that promote a view of knowledge as constructed, multiple, and evolving. Discussions of the knowledge bases for diversity and inclusion of candidates’ own representations of their experiences occur as a natural product of faculty engagement with these issues (ER: Diversity in Learning and Development listserv conversation on the complexity of engaging in cooperative group activities for students with certain kinds of disabilities).

Field experiences and clinical practice support the development of educators who can apply their knowledge of diversity, including exceptionalities, to work with all students. These experiences provide opportunities for candidates to reflect on their observations and practices in schools with students and families from diverse ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups. Our program approval process assures that these experiences help candidates apply concepts of diversity in their practice and provide feedback to candidates about their performance. For further details, see Standard 3, Indicator 3.

STD 4, ELEM. 2: WORKING WITH DIVERSE FACULTY
Candidates interact in classroom settings on campus and in schools with professional education faculty, faculty from other units, and school faculty from diverse ethnic, racial, and gender, language, exceptionality, and religious groups. The affirmation of the value of diversity is shown through good-faith efforts made to increase or maintain faculty diversity.

Our candidates have opportunities to work with diverse faculty and faculty sensitive to issues of diversity. Table 5.01 in Standard 5 (see page 69) shows that we have16 full-time faculty representing a number of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.

One of the goals of the diversity plan put into place as a result of our ISBE/NCATE visit five years ago was to increase the diversity of our faculty. Like most other education schools, we are striving to meet this goal. In our 2002-2003 annual report, we indicated our good-faith efforts to attract more diverse faculty candidates to the College, which resulted in hiring 2 ethnically/racially diverse faculty members (one Hispanic and one African-American) among 14 new hires. This year we are pleased to report that our persistent recruitment efforts have proved even more successful. We recruited 26 new faculty to NCE, over 30 percent of whom were of diverse backgrounds. The racial and ethnic composition of new faculty hired in 2003-2004 is summarized in Table 4.2.

Table 4.2 Racial and Ethnic Composition of New Faculty Hires, 2003-2004

One reasons for this success was that we took the suggestions from the 1999 Board of Examiners to heart, and continued or expanded our existing good-faith initiatives, while also exploring new avenues of making good-faith efforts to recruit a diverse faculty. For example, in 2002-2003 we fully implemented Faculty Policy 100, Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Policy and Procedures for the Employment of Full-Time Faculty at National-Louis University. This policy has helped search committees identify inclusive pools of prospective faculty members (ER: Faculty Policy 100). We are also proud of our success in retaining diverse faculty. Once faculty join NCE, they usually stay until retirement or the end of a grant. The NLU Office of Diversity, Access, and Equity and the Diversity Advisory Committee assist in recruiting and retaining a diverse faculty:

NLU Office of Diversity, Access, and Equity
In the summer of 1999, NLU hired a Diversity Director to head the Office of Diversity, Access, and Equity. This office ensures compliance with Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employment, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and NLU Anti-Sexual Harassment Guidelines. (ER: Office of Diversity, Access, and Equity documents).

Diversity Advisory Committee
The Diversity Advisory Committee (DAC) of the Office of Diversity, Access, and Equity evolved from the NCE ad hoc diversity committee formed to create a diversity plan to address the ISBE/NCATE standards. The committee pushed forward the initiatives outlined in the plan: improved advertising practices, recruitment and retention of diverse faculty, creating diversity awareness workshops, and evaluation of diversity issues in NCE. In fall, 1999, the committee reconfigured itself as a university committee and initiated the NLU Statement on Diversity. The DAC’s mission is to increase awareness of and commitment to inclusiveness and diversity at NLU (ER: DAC charge).

Faculty with whom candidates work in professional education classes and clinical practice are knowledgeable about and sensitive to preparing candidates to work with students from diverse cultural backgrounds, including students with exceptionalities.
This requirement is partially addressed in the preceding discussion of curriculum development, a process which is driven by faculty steeped in a proactive approach to diversity. In addition, the research, scholarship, and service engaged in by faculty provide powerful evidence that our faculty is sensitive to issues of diversity and operates from well-developed knowledge bases for, and conceptualizations of, diversity and inclusion. This is a necessary foundation for curricula that prepare candidates to apply these knowledge bases effectively in schools. (ER: Faculty publications on diversity). In addition, a large percentage of our graduate and doctoral candidates’ research focuses on some aspect of diversity and/or social justice. This active engagement in inquiry in relationship to diversity by candidates and faculty is an outcome of our commitments, values, and ethics in relationship to diversity (ER: Recent Examples of Graduate and Doctoral Research on Diversity). Furthermore, faculty has engaged in several professional development activities around issues of diversity:

NLU Faculty Retreats and Connections
Faculty lead presentations at recent Connections and retreats included sessions addressing the needs of candidates with disabilities and moving our college forward with regard to diversity (ER: Transcript of the Diversity Discussion from Winter 2003 Connection and Connection agenda/program). Academic accommodations and referrals for candidates with disabilities was also a featured topic at the 2003 annual Adjunct Faculty Breakfast.

NCE Faculty Diversity Survey
The experiences of oppressed and marginalized groups provide an important knowledge base that is acknowledged and respected. Many faculty have personal experiences that help sensitize them to issues of diversity. For example, many of our faculty have lived in other countries, have family members with disabilities, or live in biracial or bi-ethnic families. These life experiences provide sensitivity to and insider knowledge about diversity. To document these diverse experiences, a survey of faculty diversity was conducted in fall 2003. Results show that faculty consciously bring their relational knowledge into their teaching. The survey has been a catalyst for reflection and dialogue, and an impetus for action (ER: NCE Faculty Diversity Survey).

NCE Diversity Discussion Group
Another example of the faculty’s commitment to diversity is reflected in the Diversity Discussion Group. Faculty members Terry Jo Smith, Sue Hansen, and Diane Salmon started this once-a-month group to provide a way for faculty to connect around the issue of diversity in a positive, informal, and conversational manner. The first meeting was in early March, 2003. For each meeting, a member chooses and distributes a reading as a starting point for the conversation (ER: Diversity Group invitations and readings).