Education-Leadership, Foundations, and Policy

Front Lines of Social Change I explores gender equity and social justice theory. FLSC I provides the Women's Center internship cohort a structured classroom environment to actively reflect upon their experience; engage in professional development; and learn about the field, including gender equity issues addressed by the internship. FLSC I (fall) and FLSC II (spring) are required components of the Women's Center internship for all new interns.

Front Lines of Social Change II explores gender equity and social justice theory. FLSC II provides the Women's Center internship cohort a structured classroom environment to actively reflect upon their experience; engage in professional development; and learn about the field, including gender equity issues addressed by the internship. FLSC I (fall) and FLSC II (spring) are required components of the Women's Center internship for all new interns.

With a team, you will design and implement an innovation to address a community issue facing youth. You will become an expert in the issue, and develop the skills needed to 1) assess a social issue, 2) evaluate and integrate multiple perspectives on social issues, 3) collaborate with a diverse team of stakeholders to design and implement an innovation to address a social issue, and 4) assess and revise an innovation to improve its effectiveness.Prerequisite: YSI major

This course will focus on key interpersonal and psychological knowledge, skills and applications to guide successful practice with clients in health-related contexts. Effective communication and cultural competence serve as foundational skills, and strategies (motivational interviewing, managing stress, goal setting) will be reviewed and practiced. Topics will align with American College of Sports Medicine and other similar certifications.

This class builds a foundation on which to understand U.S. education policy, then employs this foundation to explore the effects of prominent policies intended to improve outcomes, especially among low-performing students. We examine the goals, conceptual underpinnings, and the strength of evidence for each of these policies through class discussions where we dig into the details of educational problems and the policies intended to address them.

Understanding "what works" in education is useless unless we know how to pass, implement, and sustain political support for effective education policy. To that end, this course explores the politics of U.S. K-12 education policy 1954-present. We examine policy formulation and implementation, key institutions, actors, and theories of policy-making, and the role of racial and economic inequality in influencing education policy.

This course builds on the skills students develop through the Civic Cornerstone Fellowship and applies them to local civic issues. Students will develop their ability to understand myriad perspectives on political dilemmas and enhance their capacity to work across ideological differences to construct solutions to these challenges. The semester will culminate in student-led collaboration on a proposed policy, program, or creative project.

Data and analytics are often used to answer questions in education because they are seen as objective. Yet, these approaches can involve classifying people, such as deeming some students in education as "below basic." While these labels are given for altruistic purposes, there is evidence they can be stigmatizing. In this course, we will consider the ethics of data use in education, including when it does and doesn't serve the public good.

Study abroad courses in the School of Education and Human Development Department of Leadership, Foundations, and Policy.

This course will examine the relationship between culture and education and the ways in which the study and understanding of education can be enhanced by attention to culture. Using cases drawn from studies of learning and schooling in cultures around the world as well as among minority cultures and societies in the United States , students will be challenged to begin to see education through cultural comparative frames of reference.

Is it inevitable that classrooms and schools look similar across the world? Why have modern education systems been adopted by societies with a diversity of local histories, cultures, and resources? This course examines the effort to increase access to modern Western schooling, explores countervailing conceptions of education, and considers what is gained and lost in modern schooling.

This course is a "bottom-up" history of education seminar on African Americans' struggle for equal education during the civil rights movement. As "bottom up" history, the course explores and seeks out overlooked and untold stories of youth and teacher activism. The course will include learning how to do oral history and engagement with the local community.

How do educators and activists spread messages about human rights? What might make them more likely to succeed? What are the ethical and political implications of using education as a tool for moral persuasion? Students will engage with these questions, as well as engage critically with debates over whether the human rights system offers an appropriate way to achieve justice in diverse contexts.

Independent Study

Directed Research under supervision of faculty member.

This course examines children's learning and development in the elementary school grades. The course, designed for students who plan to become teachers, focuses on cognitive development (e.g., the role of the brain in learning, misconceptions, transfer) and social development (e.g., relationships, moral development). Three themes emerge: individual variability and diversity, development, and translation from research to practice.

This course examines adolescent learning and development and is designed for students who plan to teach in secondary schools. Adolescent cognitive, physical, and social development is considered from a multi-level (e.g., school, family, community) perspective. In identifying links between these domains and learning, three themes emerge: individual variability and diversity, developmental trends, and translating educational research to practice.

Introduction to how research in developmental science intersects with applied work with children and youth. Students will learn foundational principles of development, examine how they apply to contemporary issues (e.g., disparities in educational opportunities), and highlight challenges present in the field. Students will also learn about programs and services designed to address these issues for children, youth, and families.

District policy makers make high-impact decisions on a fast track. They seek to make choices that promote equity, but timelines are short and these problems are messy. In this class, we partner with real-world decision makers facing a specific policy problem of educational equity. We will lay out policy alternatives, weigh evidence, and provide clear, feasible recommendations that have a chance to inform those policy decisions in a very real way.

This course will examine the foundations of educational policy from critical theoretical perspectives rooted in the social sciences and humanities in a graduate level seminar intended for both disciplinary students and students pursuing specialized work in educational studies. The goal of the course is to examine from a variety of critical perspectives, the core issues that underlie contemporary debates over public and educational policy.

This course covers theories, methods, and research at the intersection of education and neuroscience, as well as the implications of this work for educational practice. You will learn about the brain systems that support student learning across multiple domains of school readiness skills and across key developmental stages, and work collaboratively on a cumulative project focused on designing your own educational neuroscience research study.

This course focuses on the social, cultural, and philosophical analyses of the moral dimensions of education, professions in the field of education, educational research, policies, and practices. It introduces students to moral theories and principles and provides frameworks for ethical thinking, inquiry, and decision making. And it investigates how educational research, policies, and practices reflect social and cultural norms and values.

This course introduces students to basic concepts and methods of empirical research common to the fields of education and human development. It focuses on the relationship between research problem, questions and design and introduces students to techniques for collecting, analyzing, and evaluating research data.

This course will focus on biological, psychological and social development from birth through older adulthood. Topics will be presented via discussion of underlying theory, research, and application, with attention to how gender, race, SES, and cohort impact development. Concepts of consistency and change will be stressed. Throughout, students will be encouraged to examine and even question their own beliefs about what it means to "grow up".

This course will include both cognitive psychology and education perspectives, focusing on what cognitive psychology can tell us about how people learn and how to apply that knowledge in education. We will focus on the ways that cognitive psychology research can be designed and evaluated to be most informative in addressing practical questions of education and learning, including research questions, populations, methods, etc.