Early Childhood Education/Childhood Education in Languages, Literature, and Cultures 4+1 (BS/MA)

Program Overview:

The four-year curriculum for the Bachelor of Science in Early Childhood Education contains required graduate courses that prepare the student for the Master of Arts in Childhood Foreign Language Education. This interdisciplinary degree trains candidates to teach in the dual-language immersion classroom. With this 4+1 plan and the proper scheduling of graduate HDFS courses, students may enter immediately into the MA program in the College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, full-time with the possibility of completion within one year.

Admission Requirements:

Undergraduates in the University of Delaware HDFS major may apply for admission to the 4+1 program after completing 60 or more credits. Admission decisions will be based on GPA, work experiences, letters of recommendation, extracurricular activities, maturity, and a personal interview. There is also a proficiency requirement in the target foreign language (Minimum: Intermediate-Mid on the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview, or 43 points on the Versant Language Assessment).

It is generally expected that students will have an undergraduate GPA of at least 3.25 and a major GPA of 3.5 or better, and they will have an academic advisor who will strongly support their application to the program. Admission is competitive, so meeting the minimum requirements for admission does not guarantee admission, nor does the failure to meet a requirement result in an automatic rejection. Provisional admittance will be granted by the Office of Graduate and Professional Education. Upon completion of the undergraduate degree, the provisional status would be removed.

Program Requirements:

Students in the 4+1 program will complete all requirements for the undergraduate major in Early Childhood Education. However, the four-year curriculum for the Bachelor of Science in Early Childhood Education, when taken as part of the 4+1 program, contains required graduate courses that prepare the student for completion of the Master of Arts curriculum. With this 4+1 plan and the proper scheduling of courses as an undergraduate, students may enter immediately into the MA program full-time with the possibility of completion within one year.

UD Early Childhood Education undergraduate majors who are provisionally granted admission to the 4+1 BS/MA program in Childhood Foreign Language Education and subsequently admitted to the 4+1 program may waive the requirement to take:

• HDFS 406  (3 credits) by completing HDFS 606 Early Child Literacy Skill Development (3 credits).  They will also replace a focused elective at the 400-level (3 credits) with HDFS 621 (Family Studies I: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives). Content of the courses waived in the undergraduate program is addressed in greater depth and placed in the larger scholarly context in the corresponding graduate courses.
• For any undergraduate course requirement to be waived, the student needs to earn a grade of B (3.0) or better in the corresponding HDFS graduate course.

Course Requirements for MA in Early Childhood Education and Foreign Language (30 credits)