UNT at Frisco

Specialization Areas Available at UNT at Frisco

• Early Childhood Education

  Children’s experiences during their early years are foundational to build their social and emotional well-being and academic learning. Understanding young children’s ways of being and knowing is essential to creating environments and nurturing relationships in the classroom that are culturally sustaining. A major focus of this specialization is to re-imagine early childhood education, which involves re-humanizing processes of schooling for young children and including children in the movement for social justice and equity. 

  The faculty working in this specialization look to a near future in which young children are viewed and treated as intellectual and social agents who are knowledge-producers and complex cultural beings. Our goal is to provide early childhood educators (Pre-K-3rd grade) with the tools to see children in more expansive ways. These ways of seeing and knowing young children on their own terms can support us to critically reconceptualize pedagogies, practices, and policies that impact the lives and identities of young children, particularly those from minoritized communities, considering the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, culture, languages, abilities, gender, and other identity markers. We also examine relationships children have with technology and the natural world around them in order to consider our collective role in ecological justice. 

• STEAM Education

  This Bachelor of Science in Education specialization introduces students to the discipline of the Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics to designing integrated learning environments. Students enrolled in these courses will explore innovative venues for STEAM learning and teaching with an emphasis on diversity and equity. Consistent with the core values and commitments in the preparation program, our goal is to prepare UNT teachers to engage in transformative STEAM practices that create math and scientific communities which positively influence and grow STEAM education in schools. As a community we envision innovative methods to social issues from analyzing climate patterns and new sources of energy to the influence of social media and voting trends. We emphasize social justice and activism as central to the work of teachers engaging students with the world around them through STEAM practices that promote equity.

  Students in this specialization will learn methods of learning and teaching science and math that are equity and asset-based, rigorous, foster children’s positive mathematics and science identity development, and transform classrooms into spaces that challenge marginalizing processes and use STEAM practices as a tool to critically examine the world.