BA/BS in Education, General

Vassar's Department of Education treats teaching as something best grounded in a broad liberal arts foundation. Coursework asks students to reflect critically on how they come to understand schooling and to form their own thinking about teaching. Educational studies can be taken as a major or as a smaller minor-style sequence, and the department also runs teacher preparation programs. Students build a base in theories of learning, the social roots of education and views of schooling from around the world. The approach is interdisciplinary. Learners weigh how forces from politics, history, culture, the economy and society shape education, and they move between theory, policy and classroom practice. The department holds AAQEP accreditation for its preparation work. The program sits within the liberal arts curriculum at Vassar College, so students are able to combine it with study in other departments and programs across the college as they plan their courses.