Document Type

Syllabus

Publication Date

Spring 2024

Course Description

This course examines education through multiple lenses, exploring both the power of education to transform lives and the ways in which it can work to reproduce social inequality and oppression. It explores the difference between education and schooling and introduces the Education Studies Department mission’s core concepts: the critical educator, transformative intellectual, and public pedagogue. As we explore these concepts, we analyze the purposes, history, and contemporary context and future possibilities of schooling and education with a primary focus on the United States. As an introductory course, EDUC170 is designed to expose you to four main areas of educational thought— historical, philosophical, socio/cultural, and political/economic—and introduce you to some of the critical debates within the field. You will also participate in field experience, getting into local classrooms and other educational spaces and talking with educators in the surrounding community. At the end of the semester, you will engage in an action project designed to transform some small aspect of any educational (broadly defined) space you are a part of.

Student Outcomes

This course has three overarching goals. By the end of this course you (students) will be able to: 1) Ask and address deep questions about education and schooling (i.e. what are they? What purposes do they serve? Who benefits and who loses within our current systems? How have education and schooling changed over time and how are they changing? 2) Think critically and creatively about historical and current issues in education 3) Creatively engage in educational projects and educational change

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