The Master of Education in Secondary School Education program at Worcester State University helps you refine your teaching skills and broaden your content area knowledge so that you can excel as an educator in grades 8-12. Designed for teachers with an initial license in secondary school education, our Education Department’s well-established program offers an advanced degree in education with a concentration in one of the following subject areas: biology, English, history, math, or Spanish.
You’ll be able to advance your career at your own pace: You can complete the program either full- or part-time, and courses are offered in the fall, spring, and summer terms in a range of formats, including in person, online, and hybrid (a mixture of both). What’s more, our highly respected program also is an exceptional value. In fact, students who earn their initial license through WSU’s Post-Baccalaureate Certificate for Initial Teacher Licensure in Middle or Secondary School Education program can use four of those courses toward their M.Ed.
By taking courses in your subject area as well as in education, you’ll gain a blend of content area expertise and secondary school pedagogy that will strengthen your knowledge of adolescents’ developmental needs, abilities, and interests. You’ll also conduct research on an issue relevant to your classroom teaching, creating the proposal yourself and carrying out the project under the guidance of a faculty member.
Graduates of our program go on to rewarding careers as high school teachers, department heads, and curriculum leaders. You may use the WSU master’s degree in secondary school education to further your career advancement—and as a possible pathway to professional educator licensure through the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
This program consists of thirteen (13) courses for a total of thirty-seven (37) credits. Four of the courses (12 credits) are in core education requirements, while six (18 credits) are content area requirements. All students take ES 950 Disciplinary, Multimodal and Critical Literacies Across the Curriculum as well as five (5) classes in their field of licensure (i.e. Math, Biology, World Language/Spanish, English, or History) to meet the content area requirement. The final three classes of the program are advanced education requirements where students take a Research Course, a Thesis Seminar, and complete a one credit program portfolio encompassing both content and pedagogy.
In addition to the general admission requirements for graduate study at WSU, candidates must possess the following attributes:
