The School of Education has selected as its program theme "The Professional Educator: A Catalyst for Learning". From the theme, a conceptual framework has been developed which included a rationale and organizing principles that guide the development of the curriculum for professional education including the categorization of knowledge. The Unit's vision, mission, and dispositions emerged directly from the university's mission. Both the Unit and University strive to transmit a cultural experience for our candidates to be transformed into catalysts for learning.

     Candidates learn to create their own learning from the experiences of the faculty, curricula and field experience opportunities, and other educational leaders. Thus, because candidates create their learning outcomes from the interaction with their faculty and curricula, candidates are philosophically constructivists. While the constructivist view is primarily the philosophy by which education programs are structured, content specialists and school personnel programs might have other philosophical basis. The conceptual framework is sufficiently broad as an umbrella to embrace all of the programs. The conceptual framework is the guiding force for program development and performance assessment.

     The outcome of the framework is the development of unit standards for all programs, which are Diversity, Assessment, Reflection and Technology (Dart).