Patricia Buck, Associate Professor

ED 231 Perspectives in Education

FALL 2010

Patricia Buck, Associate Professor

Classroom: Chase Hall Room 203

Phone: 207-786-6282

Email:

Office Hours: By Appointment

EDUCATION DEPARTMENT MISSION STATEMENT

The Bates Department of Education seeks to foster the democratic possibilities of schooling through reflective engagement, research, and critical action. The aim of the department is to create an environment in which students and faculty analyze together the complex dynamics between the purposes and products of schooling and the social structures and cultural processes that comprise the broader context for education.

·  Critical action and civic responsibility –Because we want our students to develop a sense of social responsibility and concern for the common good, we encourage them to be involved in the local community and beyond through field work, service learning projects, policy analysis, student teaching, and empirical research.

·  Reflection and engagement – In our vision of education, reflection and engagement work together to deepen students’ understanding and foster their personal growth.

·  Imagination and a passion for learning - With imagination, a passion for learning, and the skills and knowledge that we help them develop, our students are well prepared to pursue their interests in education.

·  Commitment to social justice – Throughout our program, we encourage students to recognize and address the influence of social context on the democratic possibilities of schooling.

Department Library

The Education Department lounge houses a wide-ranging collection of books and journals, organized in broad topic sections. Feel free to browse there and to sign out an item by completing a check out card and filing it in the box left for that purpose on a small table in the lounge. Please cross out your name when you return the item.

Course Description

Perspectives in Education encompasses three major components including an introduction into several philosophical traditions informing contemporary educational practice, in-school, service learning field placements, and a community-based research and lesson plan project. A number of themes run through these components including: the nature of knowledge, relationship between school and society, an assets-based approach to viewing communities, and exploration of educational inequality. These themes are reflected in the essential questions of the course, which students will be asked to explore throughout the term in class readings, discussions, and written assignments.

This course explores complex questions that defy straightforward or timeless answers. While these are questions that elicit many reasonable responses from different people and students will likely leave the course with as many new and related questions as answers, students are encouraged to articulate their own perspectives and recognize the important ways in which their views differ from those of others. As a culminating component of the course, students put together a portfolio of the work completed over the semester that expresses a developing educational philosophy.

Finally, this is the first course in a sequence of required courses for students interested in pursuing teacher certification in Maine (grades 7-12) or a Secondary Concentration in Education. Students interested in pursuing either of these options should discuss specific requirements with the instructor by the end of the semester.

Essential questions we will explore in this course include the following:

·  What is the nature of knowledge?

·  What is the purpose of education?

·  What is the relationship between school and society?

·  How and what should we teach and to whom?

·  How are we to understand educational inequality?

OBJECTIVES FOR STUDENTS

·  Read and understand a variety of philosophical, historical, anthropological and sociological foundations of education;

·  Explore the relationship of fundamental ideas and texts to current issues in education through discussion, observation in schools, and written analyses and reflections;

·  Participate in a learning community that supports exploration and critical inquiry into essential questions;

·  Conduct field work in a local school and reflect on these field experience in journals and in class discussion;

·  Conduct community-based research in which you identify a community asset and/or fund of knowledge and develop a set of lessons aimed at bringing such aspects of community life into the classroom;

·  Compile a portfolio that reflects an active grappling with the essential questions of the course and fulfillment of expectations of the objectives

This is the required course in the sequence of courses leading to a minor in Educational Studies or in Teacher Education. A minor in Teacher Education leads to certification for grades 7-12. If you are interested in either option, you should discuss specific requirements with an Education faculty member.

COURSE TEXTS

Buck and Silver (Eds) (2008) ‘They Were Very Beautiful. Such Things Are’: Memoirs from Lewiston Maine and Dadaab Kenya. Booklocker. (Available in Class)

Cahn’s (1997) Classic and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Education. New York: McGraw-Hill. (Available at Campus Bookstore)

Selection from Fass’s (1993) Outside/In: Minorities and the Transformation of American Education. Oxford University Press. (Lyceum)

Selection from Gardner’s (1993) Multiple Intelligences: The Theory In Practice. New York: Basic Books. (Lyceum)

Selection from Gonzalez, Moll, and Amantis’ (eds.), Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities and Classrooms Erlbaum (Lyceum)

Koretz’s (2008) Measuring Up: What Testing Really Tells Us. Harvard University Press.

Selections from Kozol’s (1991) Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. Crown Publishers (Lyceum)

Suskind’s (1999) A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League. First Broadway Book. (Available at the Campus Bookstore).

Selections from Shor’s (1987) Critical Teaching & Everyday Life, The University of Chicago Press. (Lyceum)

Spring’s (2002) American Education. McGraw Hill. (Available at Campus Bookstore)

Tyack’s The One Best System: A history of American Urban Education. Harvard University Press. (Available at Campus Bookstore)

Selections from Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding by Design . ASCD (Lyceum)

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Regular attendance and preparation for class sessions. More than two absences will effect students’ final grade.

Field Experience (30 hours minimum) Students will be placed in a local k-12 classroom and will complete 30 hours of service learning. Placements will be arranged by the Harward Center for Community Partnership based on student interest and availability. Students must log hours made to her or his classroom. In many cases Bates students will tutor local students. Depending on level of comfort and experience students may be able to lead lessons. Students should discuss your goals for service-learning with your mentor teacher at your first meeting. The classroom teacher must sign the completed log sheet and submit an evaluation form in order for students to receive credit for the course. Students are responsible for facilitating the delivery of these documents by the end of the term. Transportation to and from placement sites can be provided by the college shuttle service. To use the shuttle, see the concierge in Chase Hall ½ hour before desired pick-up time. Up to 5 of the required 30 service learning hours may be used to complete the community research project.

Journal Entries The journal is designed to be a place in which students integrate the different elements of the course. These 3-4 page entries need to include the following:

(1) Detailed description of each visit to your field placement. Be sure to label your notes and entries with time and date of each visit. Take time immediately following a visit or that evening to describe your visit;

(2) Response to required reading; do not simply summarize the readings. Discuss what they mean to you personally, how they relate to other course material, and in relation to your school and community observations. These reading responses also need to address essential questions of the course;

(3) In general be sure to make connections between what you observe in the field and class readings, discussions, and assignments

Every Tuesday, students will exchange Journal Entries with an assigned partner. Students will read and provide written feedback on one another’s entry. Entries will be returned to their author in class every Thursday. Students are also invited to set up meetings with me to share Journal Entries and request feedback. Such initiative will be reflected in assessment of course participation.

These will be assessed based on students’ ability to offer detailed observation of classroom activities, insightful analysis of classroom observations. Insightful observation analysis may: suggest multiple ways of understanding what happened, consider alternatives to observed practices, and/or explore areas of linkage or disconnect with topics and theories explored in the course.

Essays During the course of the semester students must complete 3 papers. Essay One is required; The remaining essays may be selected from 5 possible topics. In each case students are asked to explore an essential question or questions of the course in relation to a particular set of assigned course materials. I strongly recommend that students meet with me in the development of a focused essay topic of their choice. Such initiative will be reflected in the assessment of the papers. Each essay should be 5 double spaced pages in 12 point font with standard margins.

Required Essay. Explore the relationship between a selected essential question or questions of the course and an aspect of the PBS The Story of American Public Education Video series, Fifty Years After Brown v. Board of Education, and/or Koretz’s Measuring Up

Essay Option Two. Explore the relationship between a selected essential question or questions of the course and an aspect or aspects of Spring’s American Education

Essay Option Three. Explore the relationship between a selected essential question or questions of the course and assigned readings of Plato and/or Anyon.

Essay Option Four. Explore the relationship between a selected essential question or questions of the course and assigned readings of Rousseau and/or Neil.

Essay Option Five. Explore the relationship between a selected essential question or questions of the course and assigned readings of Dewey and/or Fass.

Essay Option Six. Explore the relationship between a selected essential question or questions of the course and assigned readings of Freire and/or Shor.

Community Based Curriculum Development Project. See Research Project Description handout for more details.

Learning Portfolio

Students will compile a portfolio of work completed in this course that includes:

·  An Introduction (2-3 pages) that articulates their developing perspective on the essential questions of the course and the ways in which that perspective reflects or counters that of a philosopher or philosophers read;

·  Community Based Curriculum Development Project;

·  Weekly Journal entries with partner’s comments & revised;

·  Community Based Curriculum Development Project;

·  3 essays (5 pages each) which relate a selected essential question(s) of the course to a particular set of course materials.

GRADING

Preparation and Engagement 10%

Service Learning 10%

Journal Entries 15%

Community Based Curriculum Development Project 15%

Essays 45% (15% each)

Portfolio including Introduction 5%

CLASS SCHEDULE

Sylvester, PS. (1994) Elementary School Curricula and Urban Transformation. Harvard Educational Review. (Lyceum)

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