Committed to Educational Freedom and Self-Determination
The Department of Teaching, Learning, and Leading is guided by our School’s mission-vision and organized by our faculty’s purposes, principles, commitments, and praxes.
TLL Academic Programs
About the TLL Department
Our Purposes
Our shared purposes are to:
- Support the self-determination of peoples to practice knowledge traditions
- Join in global efforts of collective educational liberation
- Contribute to societal transformation toward freedom through our full range of educational endeavors
- Cultivate rigorous intellectual praxis in educators
Our Principles
Our shared principles are:
- Reciprocal and just relationality
- Common cause and collective responsibility
- Freedom through practice of knowledge traditions
- Refusal of systems and structures of domination
Our Commitments
We are committed to:
- Bold, collective study toward liberation
- Struggling together in the internal tensions of freedom work
- Learning, recovering, and recentering knowledge traditions historically excluded from our field
- Collectively imagining and practicing free alternatives and futures Collaboratively cultivating freedom and justice in praxis
Our Praxes
Our shared praxes are:
- Lifting up, studying, growing, and working across multiple liberatory knowledge and epistemic traditions
- Building community through dialecticism, dialogism, and difference
- Centering freedom stories and storytelling
- Prioritizing the obligations of purposes, principles, and commitments
- Embracing action and activism
Signature TLL Initiatives
The TLL Department offers students across our programs and community partners the opportunity to learn about justice and freedom in curriculum work. Held in the spring term, the annual event features keynote speakers, student presentations, and roundtable discussions.
Each academic year, the TLL Department hosts a faculty colloquium series in which our faculty give a presentation on urgent topics in teaching, learning, and leading. The series is open to all students, faculty, and staff within our department.
Collaborations and Partnerships
Collaborative for Evaluation and Assessment Capacity
Provides evaluation and assessment services for organizations, agencies, and programs involved with children and youth.
Falk Laboratory School
K-8 campus laboratory school affiliated with the Pitt School of Education.
Forum for Western Pennsylvania School Superintendents
Provides professional development experiences for school leaders in our region.
PittEd Justice Collective
Engages in anti-racist, justice-directed initiatives with students, staff, faculty, alumni, and community partners.
Tri-State Area School Study Council
Improves educational opportunities for children by strengthening school organization and administration.
TLL Leadership
Cassie Quigley (Chair)
Tinukwa Boulder (Associate Chair)
Emily Rainey (Associate Chair)
TLL Faculty Resource Center
Visit the TLL Faculty Center for a centralized hub of resources related to teaching, research, academic affairs, and more.
**The resources are on a secure website and are available only to faculty**