If you are highly motivated and passionate about becoming an educator, then Goddard College can offer an individualized pathway for achieving your dream. Whether you are just beginning your Bachelor of Arts in Education, or are a transfer student, we provide you with the opportunity to tailor your own program and goals and to become an educator capable of transforming your students, classroom, and community.
Our program gives future educators a strong grounding in pedagogy and curriculum development and implementation. But we do much more: you’ll be given the space to adapt the theory that you learn to the world in which you live. Along the way, you’ll be encouraged to explore and trust a new paradigm for learning, first for yourself, and then for the students and communities you wish to inform and empower.
The Bachelor of Arts in Education is of special interest to educators, parents, or community/cultural workers interested in the field of educational pedagogy and progressive education. You’ll experience in-depth and expansive learning that will provide a strong foundation for future research and scholarship in your area of study, while also cultivating enduring meaning in your life and profession.
Goddard’s low-residency Education Program is rigorous, inquiry-driven, and grounded in social responsibility. It focuses on the whole person, not just the mind.
Engaged faculty serve as guides in the learning process, rather than as dispensers of knowledge. Our personalized learning approach places attention on the needs of each student, and on the needs of their community, rather than on any pre-determined curriculum. Goddard educators learn to validate each student’s experience and culture, recognizes students’ individual needs, and respects their values.
Request more information from an Admissions Counselor.
The Faculty
The Education Program faculty are deeply committed to offering a holistic, interdisciplinary and student-centered approach to learning that is personally and socially relevant.
Our faculty is comprised of national and international scholar practitioners with extensive experience supporting students taking charge of their learning.
Study Options
Goddard’s Education Program offers full- and part-time study leading to the following degrees:
Students pursuing the Bachelor of Arts can focus their studies in the following areas:
Students pursuing the Master of Arts can focus their studies in the following areas:
- Teacher Licensure
- Bilingual Education
- Community Education
- School Counseling Licensure
- Dual Language Early Childhood Education
Admissions Information
The Bachelor of Arts in Education program is open to students who wish to extend their knowledge in the field of education to meet personal and/or professional goals. Transfer credit and/or credit awarded for prior learning up to a total of 75 credits can be applied to the 120 semester hour credits required for the degree.
A minimum of three semesters of enrollment in the BA in Education program is required for graduation.
See complete application instructions for the BA in Education and the MA in Education.
Low-Residency Model
At the start of the semester, students attend an intensive eight-day residency in Vermont or Washington, followed by 16 weeks of independent work and self-reflection in close collaboration with a faculty advisor. Goddard pioneered this format nearly a half century ago to meet the needs of adult students with professional, family, and other obligations seeking learning experiences grounded in the real-world.
Residencies are a time to explore, network, learn, witness, and share with peers, staff, and faculty. Students work with advisors and peers in close-knit advising groups to forge individualized study plans that describe their learning objectives for the semester.
Working closely with their faculty advisors, and supported by fellow learners, students identify areas of study, personal goals, relevant resources, and avenues to achieve these goals. Students also attend and are invited to help organize workshops, keynote addresses, celebrations and other events intended to stimulate, inspire, and challenge.
This low-residency model combines the breadth of a collaborative community with the focus of personalized learning, enhanced by insightful exchanges with a faculty advisor.
Locations
Students in the Education Program may choose to attend residencies in either:
- Plainfield, Vermont, on Goddard’s historic main campus, located just outside Montpelier, the state capital. It’s a former farm with a manor garden, surrounding forests, and period architecture.
- Seattle, Washington, which is a community campus located at the Martin Luther King Center F.A.M.E. Community Center, and where residencies are conducted in Spanish and English.
When you apply, you’ll select one of these two sites for the duration of your studies.
Residency Week
Residencies are a rich time of exploration, connection, and planning. A residency is comprised of:
- New-student orientation
- Individual and group advising sessions
- Workshops, presentations, mini-courses, and panels
- Peer work groups
- Planning sessions related to teacher licensure
- Information sessions (assessment of prior learning; financial aid; how to do research; planning your final semester etc.)
- Co-curricular activities (support groups, art shows, films, movement workshops, meditation space, etc.)
- Commencement
Writing the semester study plan is an important focus of the residency. Working closely with your faculty advisor, and supported by fellow learners, you articulate your educational and personal goals for your studies within the context of degree criteria and program requirements. The study plan is your detailed and individualized map and will address the following:
- The semester’s learning goals
- The resources the student plans to draw on (e.g., books, journals, conferences)
- The methodology the student plans to use (e.g., library or field research, interviews, creative production)
- The specific learning activities the student will undertake (e.g., creative and critical reading and writing, observations, field work, keeping a journal)
- The academic work the student will produce (e.g. essays, visual art work, workshop reports, poems, interview transcriptions, annotations)
- A bibliography of reading the student plans to do during the semester
The Semester
Following the residency and over the course of 16 weeks of study and reflection, you will submit your work to your faculty advisor. Typically, there are 5 submissions for full-time students and 3 submissions for part-time students. Evidence of the work completed can include essays, critical and creative writing, sample curricula, classroom materials, documentation of art practice/works, book annotations, and a cover letter in which you reflect on the learning process.
Your advisor responds promptly in writing to your materials with a detailed letter addressing the various components of your work and containing appraisal, feedback, and suggestions.
Through the regular exchange of work and responses, a sustained, meaningful dialogue takes place centered on your learning and goals. Students often describe this dialogue as transformative and empowering.
At the end of the semester, in lieu of grades, students and advisors write comprehensive evaluations of the student’s learning.
Degree Requirements
Throughout your course of study, you are expected to deeply engage with the degree criteria, working toward a full and sustained demonstration of them by graduation. Students graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Education will have successfully completed the Goddard undergraduate degree criteria and will also successfully have accomplished the following:
- Gained an understanding and actualized the essential concepts of progressive education; namely, inquiry-based learning, reflection and critical thinking, and student-focused curriculum;
- Prepared themselves to work toward the creation of a more just, humane, democratic, and sustainable world;
- Produced a culminating project in the form of a senior study in an area of interest; for example, curriculum development, multicultural education, alternative education, environmental education, critical pedagogy, democratic schooling, collaborative teaching, feminist theories of education, or authentic assessment.
Authorizations
Vermont Program
Goddard’s Education Program is approved by the Vermont Agency of Education and the Vermont Standards Board for Professional Educators for preparing licensure-seeking students to receive a Vermont Initial License in one or more of six endorsement areas. Vermont participates with all other states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico in the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification’s Interstate Agreement, which governs licensure reciprocity.
Washington Program
Goddard College programs operating in Washington State are authorized by the Washington Student Achievement Council. For more information, please refer to Accreditation and Approvals.
WA State Residents: The Goddard College BA in Education Program and MA in Education Program do not meet the educational requirements for licensure in Washington State. For further information, refer to the State of Washington Professional Educator Standards Board.