Courses

EDUC B105 Education Studies: Theories, Practices, & Possibilities

Fall 2024

This course is designed for students interested in exploring key theories, competencies, and questions in the field of education studies in general and the Education Department at Bryn Mawr and Haverford in particular in relation to each enrolled student's experiences and aspirations. Areas of exploration include: the significance of community-based praxis and research; skill-building in conflict resolution and restorative practice; the nature of assessment; the role of technology in education and society; the meaning and purpose of theory; and, throughout, retrospective experiential reflection in dialogue with students' future goals.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Back to top

EDUC B200 Community Learning Collaborative: Practicing Partnership

Spring 2025

One of the four entry-point options for student majoring or minoring in Education Studies, this course is open to students exploring an interest in educational practice, theory, research, and policy. The course asks how myriad people, groups, and fields have defined the purpose of education, and considers the implications of conflicting definitions for generating new, more just, and more inclusive modes of "doing school" informed by community-based as well as academic streams of educational practice. In collaboration with practicing educators, students learn practical and philosophical approaches to experiential, community-engaged learning across individual relationships and organizational contexts. Fieldwork in an area school or organization required

Writing Attentive

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Child and Family Studies.

Back to top

EDUC B210 Perspectives on Special Education

Not offered 2024-25

One of the four entry-point options for students majoring or minoring in Education Studies, this course has as its goal to introduce students to a range of topics, challenges and dilemmas that all teachers need to consider. Students will explore pedagogical strategies and tools that empower all learners on the neurological spectrum. Some of the topics covered in the course include how the brain learns, how past learning experiences impact teaching, how education and civil rights law impacts access to services, and how to create an inclusive classroom environment that welcomes and affirms all learners. The field of special education is vast and complex. Therefore, the course is designed as an introduction to the most pertinent issues, and as a launch pad for further exploration. Weekly fieldwork required.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Child and Family Studies; Praxis Program.

Back to top

EDUC B215 Democracy, Race, and American Education

Spring 2025

In this course participants will collectively ask: what function does education play in a healthy democracy? How has the United States' history of race relations informed its institutions-both governing and educational ones? And perhaps most critically, what do we hold as hopes for the future of education and how can we shape that future? This seminar will include film screenings and engage with the work of scholars, activists, collectives, and politicians.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Back to top

EDUC B217 Lessons in Liberation: Rejecting Colonialist Power in Edu

Not offered 2024-25

Formal schooling is often perceived as a positive vestige of colonization, yet traditional practices continue a legacy of oppression, in different forms. This course will analyze education practices, language, knowledge production, and culture in ways especially relevant in the age of globalization. We will explore and contextualize the subjugation of students and educators that perpetuates colonialist power and implement practices that amplify the voices of the marginalized. We will learn lessons in liberation from a historical perspective and consider contemporary influence, with a cross-continental focus. Liberatory education practices have always existed, often on the margins of colonial forces, but present nonetheless. This course will support students' pursuit of a politics of resistance, subversion, and transformation. We will focus on the development of a critical consciousness, utilizing abolitionist and fugitive teaching pedagogy and culturally responsive pedagogy as tools for resistance. Students will engage with novels, documentaries, historical texts, and scholarly documents to explore US and Cape Verdean education as case studies. In this course, we will consider the productive tensions between an explicit commitment to ideas of progress, and the anticolonial concepts and paradigms which impact what is created to achieve education liberation.

Back to top

EDUC B220 Changing Pedagogies in Mathematics and Science

Not offered 2024-25

This Praxis course will examine research-based approaches to teaching mathematics and science. What does research tell us about how people learn? How can one translate this learning theory into teaching approaches that will help all students learn mathematics and science? How are these new approaches, that often involve active, hands-on, inquiry based learning, being implemented in the classroom? What challenges arise when one tries to bring about these types of changes in education? How do issues of equity, discrimination, and social justice impact math and science education? The Praxis component of the course usually involves two (2) two hour visits per week for 8 weeks to a local math or science classroom.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Praxis Program.

Back to top

EDUC B225 Topics: Empowering Learners

Not offered 2024-25

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Praxis course.

Writing Attentive

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Praxis Program.

Back to top

EDUC B240 Qualitative Research

Not offered 2024-25

This course teaches students to use and interpret observation, survey, interview, focus group, and other qualitative methods of educational research, as well as to read and write about such research. In addition to class meetings, research teams will meet regularly.

Writing Attentive

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Back to top

EDUC B250 Literacies and Education

Not offered 2024-25

A critical exploration of what counts as literacy, who decides, and what the implications are for teaching and learning. Students explore both their own and others experiences of literacy through reading and writing about power, privilege, access and responsibility around issues of adult, ESL, cultural, multicultural, gendered, academic and critical literacies. Fieldwork required. Priority given first to those pursuing certification or a minor in educational studies.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Child and Family Studies; Praxis Program.

Back to top

EDUC B260 Reconceptualizing Power in Education

Not offered 2024-25

The systematic critical exploration of the influence of power in education requires attention and re-conceptualization; this course investigates the following question: how can power be redistributed to ensure equitable educational outcomes? We will examine the production of transformative knowledge, arguing the necessity for including creativity and multi-disciplinary collaboration in contemporary societies. Supporting students' pursuit of a politics of resistance, subversion, and transformation will allow for the rethinking of traditional education. We will also center the intersections between race, class, gender, sexuality, language, religion, citizenship status, and geographic region, assessing their impact on teaching and learning. Weekly fieldwork required.

Back to top

EDUC B266 Geographies of School and Learning: Urban Education Reconsidered

Spring 2025

This course examines issues, challenges, and possibilities of urban education in contemporary America. We use as critical lenses issues of race, class, and culture; urban learners, teachers, and school systems; and restructuring and reform. While we look at urban education nationally over several decades, we use Philadelphia as a focal "case" that students investigate through documents and school placements. Weekly fieldwork in a school required.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Child and Family Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities; Praxis Program; Sociology.

Back to top

EDUC B282 Abolitionist Teaching for Education Revolution

Not offered 2024-25

This course will focus on the development of a critical consciousness, utilizing abolitionist teaching pedagogy and culturally responsive pedagogy, as tools for social transformation and resistance. Postcolonial Theory and Critical Race Theory will be utilized as lenses for understanding the impact of white supremacy in deeply rooted institutions. Formal schooling is often perceived as a positive vestige of colonization, yet traditional practices often continue a legacy of oppression, in different forms. Postcolonial Theory provides a variety of methodological tools for the analysis of education and culture that are especially relevant in the age of globalization, necessitating the reconceptualization of citizenship. Critical Race Theory offers a set of tenets that can be used to contextualize subjugation and implement practices that amplify the voices of the marginalized. Afro-centrism and Critical Black Feminism inform a revolutionized education, which can, and should, support students' pursuit of a politics of resistance, subversion, and transformation. Students will engage with novels, documentaries, historical texts, and scholarly documents to explore US education as a case study. Experiential trips to Afrocentric and non-traditional educational spaces add depth to our work. In this course, we will consider the productive tensions between an explicit commitment to ideas of emancipation and progress, and the postcolonial concepts and paradigms which impact what is created in the achievement of education revolution.

Back to top

EDUC B290 Co-creation for Equity & Justice: Theory & Practice

Spring 2025

This course explores co-creation of teaching and learning for equity and justice as a growing practice in various national and global contexts. Students will: (a) analyze the theories, traditions, and policies that inform co-creation (e.g., pedagogical partnership; student voice/Committee on the Rights of the Child; the democratic schools movement; critical and feminist pedagogies; decolonizing and anti-racist education); (b) explore practices of co-creation across contexts around the world; and (c) generate an action plan for a co-creation approach appropriate to one of the area of specialization offered through the major in Education Studies (e.g., secondary education, out-of-school contexts, higher education) and focused on fostering equity and justice within that area.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Back to top

EDUC B295 Exploring and Enacting Transformation of Higher Education.

Not offered 2024-25

As institutions of higher education embrace and even seek greater diversity, we also see an increase in tensions born of differences across which we have little preparation to communicate, learn, and live. This course will be co-created by students enrolled and the instructor, and it will provide a forum for exploration of diversity and difference and a platform for action and campus-wide education. Extensive, informal writing and more formal research and presentations will afford you the opportunity to craft empowering narratives for yourselves and your lives and to take research and teaching beyond the classroom. Two to three hours of campus-based field work required each week.

Writing Attentive

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Back to top

EDUC B301 Curriculum and Pedagogy Seminar

Fall 2024

A consideration of theoretical and applied issues related to effective curriculum design, pedagogical approaches and related issues of teaching and learning. Fieldwork is required. Enrollment is limited to 15 with priority given first to students pursuing certification and second to seniors planning to teach.

Writing Intensive

Counts Toward: Child and Family Studies; Praxis Program.

Back to top

EDUC B302 Practice Teaching Seminar

Not offered 2024-25

Drawing on participants' diverse student teaching placements, this seminar invites exploration and analysis of ideas, perspectives and approaches to teaching at the middle and secondary levels. Taken concurrently with Practice Teaching. Open only to students engaged in practice teaching.

Back to top

EDUC B303 Practice Teaching in Secondary Schools

Not offered 2024-25

Supervised teaching in secondary schools (12 weeks). Two units of credit are given for this course. Open only to students preparing for state certification.

Back to top

EDUC B308 Inquiries into Black Study, Language Justice, and Education

Not offered 2024-25

Growing out of the Lagim Tehi Tuma/"Thinking Together" program (LTT), the course will explore the implications for education in realizing the significance of global Black liberation and Black Study/ies-particularly in relation to questions of the suppression and sustenance of language diversity and with a focus, as well, on Pan-Africanism-by engaging with one particular community as a touchstone for learning from and forwarding culturally sustaining knowledge. Prerequisites: Two courses, at least one in Education, with the second in Africana Studies, Linguistics, Sociology, or Anthropology; or permission of the instructor.

Back to top

EDUC B403 Supervised Work

Back to top

EDUC B425 Praxis III: Independent Study

Praxis III courses are Independent Study courses and are developed by individual students, in collaboration with faculty and field supervisors. A Praxis courses is distinguished by genuine collaboration with fieldsite organizations and by a dynamic process of reflection that incorporates lessons learned in the field into the classroom setting and applies theoretical understanding gained through classroom study to work done in the broader community.

Back to top

ARTD B260 Dance Education: Practice and Performance

Spring 2025

Dance education is a world where teaching and performance coalesce to center being-with-our-bodies as a platform for learning. This course involves collaboratively creating an educational program for young audiences, communities, and participants in various educational sites. The seminar portion of the course engages students in reading, writing, and discussion on various perspectives of dance pedagogy, theory, and teaching strategies. The embodied component of the course brings students into a fluid relationship between theory and practice through teaching, peer-observation, and reflection on arts in education. There will be field visits during the course that include teaching and performance opportunities. This course is intended for students with experience in any dance form or theatrical performance at any level and we welcome students who are courageously beginning their journey with dance. It is embodied and writing attentive.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Education Studies.

Back to top

ENGL B220 The Teaching of Writing

Not offered 2024-25

This Praxis course is designed for students interested in teaching or tutoring writing at the high-school or college level. The course focuses on current theories of rhetoric and composition, theories of writing and learning, writing pedagogy, and literacy issues. Students will get hands-on experience with curriculum design and lesson planning, strategies for classroom teaching and individual instruction, and will develop digital projects related to multilingual writing and plagiarism. The Praxis components of the course are primarily project-based, but we may also make one or two group visits to local sites where writing is taught.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Education Studies; Praxis Program.

Back to top

ENGL B261 Colonizing Girlhoods: L.M.Montgomery and Laura Ingalls Wilde

Not offered 2024-25

This class explores what we can see anew when we juxtapose two iconic figures of North American children's literature: L.M. Montgomery's Anne Shirley and Laura Ingalls Wilder's fictionalized self-portrait, Laura Ingalls. Both characters have risen to mythic proportions in their respective countries, and are powerful signs in an international culture industry. After setting up key eighteenth-century concepts and contexts for what French historian Philippe Ariès calls the "invention of childhood", we will explore the ways in which images of young girls have been deployed as the benign faces of ruthless imperialism, reading through the entirety of each original series. We will track the geographical movement of both heroines, with particular attention to different spatial narratives of nationhood and empire-building, whether manifest destiny in the U.S., or what critic Northrop Frye has termed the "garrison mentality" of Canadian culture. Here we'll be especially attentive to commonalities in how both authors produce class-stratified and racialized notions of girlhood, as well as divergences in how both countries, each still framed to varying degrees as the "infant nation" of Great Britain, yield new and evolving discourses of girlhood.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Education Studies.

Back to top

SOCL B258 Sociology of Education

Not offered 2024-25

Major sociological theories of the relationships between education and society, focusing on the effects of education on inequality in the United States and the historical development of primary, secondary, and post-secondary education in the United States. Other topics include education and social selection, testing and tracking, and micro- and macro-explanations of differences in educational outcomes. This is a Praxis II course; placements are in local schools.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Child and Family Studies; Education Studies; Praxis Program.

Back to top

SOCL B317 Comparative Social Policy: Cuba, China, US, Scandinavia

Not offered 2024-25

This course will examine different countries' policy choices to address different societal challenges. Four societal types - socialist (Cuba), post-socialist (China), capitalist (US), and social-democratic (Scandinavia) - will be studies to help us understand how these different kinds of societies conceive of social problems and propose and implement attempted solutions. We will examine particular problems/solutions in four domains: health/sports; education; environment; technological development. As we explore these domains, we will attend to methodological issues involved in making historical and institutional comparisons

Back to top