In the process of generating claims about Quality Principle I, the program faculty should examine the statements of the goals, objectives, promises, and standards published in the institution’s catalogs, brochures, state approval or registration reports, and Web sites describing the program’s projected outcomes. These public materials contain statements about what graduates of the program should know and be able to do. The claims in the Brief must be consistent with the program’s public claims. The faculty cannot make one set of claims for TEAC and a different set for other audiences.

One way to check these statements against the components of TEAC’s Quality Principle I would be to classify these published statements as statements about the program graduates’ knowledge of subject matter, pedagogy, or teaching skills (including learning to learn, technology, and multicultural perspectives). Some statements may fit more than one category*, and some may not fit any category.** Although the statements in the latter group may be important to the institution, because they do not fit any TEAC category, they need not have any further role in the TEAC accreditation process.


*The claim by some programs, for example, that their graduates are liberally educated could be sustained as a claim of subject matter knowledge, caring, diversity, technology, and learning to learn. A claim that graduates are master teachers, depending on how master is defined, could prove to be a claim that encompassed all of the Quality Principle I components.

**The published materials may claim that the graduates are the most competent in the state, or that the program is the leading program in the region, or that the graduates are devout, or hold liberal political beliefs, etc. Although these claims may be core and signature claims of the institution, if a clear connection to Quality Principle I cannot be made, these claims need not be included in the Brief.

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