About the Major
Increasingly, school districts need science teachers who are highly qualified to teach across the science curriculum. Students who complete OWU’s Integrated Science major will be eligible to earn Adolescent to Young Adult (AYA) Integrated Science Licensure, qualifying them to teach a broad range of science subjects in grades 7 through 12. When you major in Integrated Science for Teachers, you complete classes in life sciences (biology, microbiology, zoology); chemistry; geology and geography; physics and astronomy; and mathematics – along with your education and general course requirements.
In addition to completing the breadth of knowledge across the sciences, students in the Integrated Science program leading to adolescence and young adult licensure complete education courses, carefully planned and supervised field-based experiences, and student teaching in classrooms with certified, experienced teachers. Education faculty members coach preservice teachers during their teaching and plan and supervise their field experiences. Student teaching is supervised by both members of the education faculty and faculty in content area disciplines.
The teacher preparation program is based on current theories and research about teaching and learning. The Education Department adheres to standards that address issues related to the value and recognition of student diversity, to the depth of teachers’ knowledge of content and pedagogy, and to the need for teachers to use a wide repertoire of instructional skills and approaches to plan, implement, and assess learning with multiple sources of data, including a variety of formal and informal strategies used to support and evaluate the processes and products of learning. In addition, there are varied educational and professional opportunities provided by the program for teacher preparation students to learn through experiences with a wide range of verbal, visual, technological, and creative media, to participate in classrooms that function as communities of learners, and to reflect on their own and other’s processes of learning and teaching practices. The Integrated Science licensure component within the major consists of a 15-week secondary methods course with related field experience, a content-specific methods course, a professional seminar, and 15-weeks of student teaching.
