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Education Current Courses

Spring 2024

Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
EDST 120-01 Contemporary Issues in American Education
Instructor: Jacquie Forbes
Course Description:
An examination of current policies, practices, and problems in the landscape of American education with particular attention to the perspectives of various stakeholders (e.g. teachers, students, families, community leaders, employers, and elected officials). U.S. diversity with respect to race, class, gender, language, and exceptionality is considered within a variety of educational contexts. The course also examines the ways in which educational issues and reform efforts intersect with social, economic, political, and cultural forces.
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 313
EDST 140-01 Educational Psychology
Instructor: Kirk Anderson
Course Description:
An examination of physical, cognitive, and psychological developmental theories and research as well as theories of learning. The course includes theoretical perspectives on: age-stage characteristics, exceptionality, achievement versus aptitude, as well as how developmental, sociocultural, and motivational factors influence student learning in classroom contexts.
10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
ALTHSE 08
EDST 250-01 Curriculum Theory
Instructor: Kirk Anderson
Course Description:
An examination of how the curriculum of educational institutions is shaped as well as how curriculum serves as a shaping force for educational institutions. This includes an examination of various conceptions of curriculum and of knowledge as well as curriculum ideologies and structures. Finally, the course examines how diverse student populations may experience the curriculum.Prerequisites: 120 or 130, and 140.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MW
BOSLER 314
EDST 260-01 Introduction to Educational Research
Instructor: Jacquie Forbes
Course Description:
An introduction to the purposes and methodologies of research in education including how various stakeholders in the educational community use and access research findings as well as how studies in education are designed, implemented, and disseminated. Quantitative, qualitative, and historical methodologies are addressed. Research processes are introduced around the topic of literacy. Students will develop a review of the research literature on a topic related to literacy using online catalogs, databases, and other open access resources to find and gather sources and digital publications formats to disseminate their reviews. Prerequisite: 140.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
BOSLER 307
EDST 370-01 Education and Emerging Technologies
Instructor: James D'Annibale
Course Description:
An examination of the role of emerging technologies in American education. Particular issues of focus each semester will be selected by the instructor and might include the capabilities and limitations of contemporary technological tools, how technological tools, particularly new media, can be used to enhance teaching and learning in diverse educational settings, trends in and variations of e-learning, and perspectives on digital etiquette, ethical reasoning, legal guidelines, and institutional policies related to technology use in educational settings. Prerequisite: 260 or Social Science Research Methods (AFST 200, AMST 202, ANTH 240, ANTH 241, EASN 310, ECON 228, LAWP 228, PMGT 228, POSC 239, PSYC 211, SOCI 240, SOCI 244, or WGSS 200), or permission of instructor.
09:30 AM-10:20 AM, MWF
STERN 103
EDST 391-01 Pedagogical Partnerships in Higher Education
Instructor: Noreen Lape
Course Description:
Pedagogical partners are undergraduate students who are paired with professors to serve as pedagogical consultants. Students visit a professor's course weekly to observe their teaching and then engage in a semester long conversation on teaching and learning. The professor benefits from the student's perspective on their teaching, and the student benefits from developing more awareness about their learning. While students serve as pedagogical partners, the course will deepen their awareness of both the science of learning and a variety of pedagogies in higher education. Students will discuss how prior knowledge, curiosity, motivation, sociality, emotion, knowledge organization, mastery, course climate, and self-direction, among others, factor into learning. They will also survey several pedagogies such as writing-in-the-discipline, trauma-informed, inclusive, universal design, problem-based, and collaborative. This course is a WiD course, and so students will learn to keep observation notes, write observational reports to share with their pedagogical partner, compose self-reflections on their own learning, and research a pedagogical question for the professor with whom they're paired.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
BOSLER 213
EDST 391-02 Education in the African/Black Community: 19th Century to the Present
Instructor: Naaja Rogers
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 320-02. This course investigates the ways that various historical, political, sociological, and psychological issues impact education for African/Black children in the U.S., specifically as it pertains to resources, goals, outcomes, attitudes, and beliefs. To address the historical issues, this course will discuss the importance of education for African/Black people in relation to the growth of educational achievements from 1865 to the present. We will address the politics of education for African/Black people by examining the role that it plays in fostering agency, self-definition, and self-determination and positively transforming and revitalizing African/Black communities. Lastly, this course will survey the sociological and psychological issues that impact the educational experiences of African/Black people. Afrocentric and culturally relevant approaches to education, pedagogy, and teaching will then be introduced and discussed as essential guides for education in African/Black communities.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
ALTHSE 110
EDST 391-03 Anthropology of Learning, Knowing and Education
Instructor: Amalia Pesantes Villa
Course Description:
Cross-listed with ANTH 345-01. How do humans learn? How does cultural transmission occur in different parts of the world? What role has education played in identity formation, cultural eradication, and resistance? Education, broadly defined, takes place in both formal and informal settings, it occurs across generations and across the lifetime of individuals, it shapes our minds and our bodies. This class aims to introduce students to issues and approaches relevant to the study of education from an anthropological perspective. We will learn about anthropological concepts, and methods to document and analyze education, schooling, and cultural transmission. We will also learn about the role of anthropology in applied educational processes. Using ethnographic material from different parts of the world, we will discuss the relationship between education and identity, resistance, accommodation, and knowledge-production. We will specifically focus on the way in which education was used to control and assimilate indigenous populations, and how Indigenous people today are using education as a decolonizing tool, and the role that anthropologists can play in supporting these efforts.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 304
EDST 391-04 Sociological Theories of Education
Instructor: Dan Schubert
Course Description:
Cross-listed with SOCI 230-01.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 304
EDST 470-02 Senior Seminar
Instructor: Kirk Anderson
Course Description:
The design and implementation of a study in an individual area of interest within the major concentration culminating in the writing of a conference paper or publishable article. Students will develop a review of the related research literature on their chosen topic using on-line catalogs, databases and other open access resources to access sources, gather data related to their topic employing quantitative, qualitative, and/or historiographic methodologies enhanced by electronic devices as appropriate, analyze their data using digital software as appropriate, write a conference paper or publishable article, electronically submit their conference proposals/articles, and disseminate their work via conference, digital, or paper publication formats. Prerequisites: 120 or 130, and 140, 250, 260, 300 or 310.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MW
LIBRY ALDEN