Teacher Education Center of Ming Chuan University Brief History
The Teacher Education Center of Ming Chuan University was founded by President Dr. Chuan Lee in 1996 to fulfill the need for developing quality secondary school teachers in response to the National Teacher Education Policy. Since its establishment, the Teacher Education Center, originally directed by Dr. Pei-Di Shen, has placed great importance on alliance relationships between the university and secondary schools. Curriculum and course coverage of the Center focus on enhancing student-teachers’ six professional competences: curriculum design, teaching practice, classroom management, multiple forms of educational assessments, educational counseling and self-growth. In 2015, Dr. Hui-Wen Tang was appointed as director of the Center.
Throughout the past decade, the Center has navigated several turning points in order to nurture teachers of the future by ushering in new and emerging courses ranging from educational technology, international education, educational innovation, emotional management, sex education, environmental education, career education, home economics education, multicultural education, etc. Additional emphases have been placed on developing student teachers’ moral reasoning, independent thinking, leadership and lifelong learning abilities.
The inception of 12-year basic education policy in 2014 turned a new page in Taiwan’s teacher education history, the Center therefore has outlined the development of “high-leverage practices” for teacher candidates by focusing on improving the performance of the next generation of teachers and the evolution of teacher education through performance-based training, transformative learning and the adoption of learn-to-teach initiatives, targeting improvement of teacher preparation in an interdisciplinary manner in order to cope with challenges that may arise in the future.