Institute for Educational Initiatives - Education, Schooling, and Society

Have you ever wondered why there is a cyclic predictability to the daily sunrise...why art is universally beloved...why the soothing rhythm of a mother's heartbeat for a baby in utero matches Mozart's waltz tempos? Do you believe that coincidences exist or in six degrees of separation? Could there be a purposeful design to the structure of reality that is reflected through quantity and authored by God? In this course, we will explore how spirituality animates quantitative topics in myriad domains (e.g., art, mathematics, music, physics, logic) as well as how these topics can deepen our understanding of spirituality. We will push back against common narratives that aim to compartmentalize or set in opposition faith and science or reason. Though this course will explore quantitative topics, it will not be computation-based, and prior understanding of any topics in mathematics, science, etc. is not required. We will take an invitational stance and surface ideas through activities, readings, discussion, and examples. Join us as we explore the mysteries of intelligible reality and the ways quantity is illuminated by the Spirit.

Introduces first-year students to educational themes, such as schooling, moral education, and social critique, through the study of literature, from various periods, including how it influences our understanding of human and social nature today.

What is it in your educational experience–the vast preoccupation of your life thus far–that accounts for your ability to endeavor, even in the face of risk, toward what is good, beautiful, just, and true? Martin Luther King, Jr., referred to such a quality of life as being thermostatic, insisting that we be not merely thermometers that record “the ideas and principles of popular opinion,” but thermostats that “transform the mores of society.” This course provides students a literary lens to understand such a desired impact of education as a field of study, using five literary works from which we can deduce how, over the course of life’s various stages, different forms of education, including schooling, shape our capacities for critique and hope. Through its analytical readings and intensive writing, the course enables students to: 1) gain a metacognitive perspective on their own thinking and learning, addressing why you succeed in schooling especially; 2) examine the educational imagination by which we, especially through literature, constitute meaningful lives of coherence; and 3) consider factors in the creative process and where knowing is going on the basis of how literature and the processes of writing, in particular, forge new models of reality. Toward these ends, we will read five classics of literature representative of different periods in the 20th century–Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer (1961), Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), E.M. Forster’s Howards End (1910), and Wendell Berry’s A World Lost (1996)–keeping in mind literature with which students might be contemporaneously familiar about schooling and education alongside writers on narrative theories.

Many have claimed that the American educational system is the "great equalizer among men." In other words, the educational system gives everyone a chance to prosper in American society regardless of each person's social origins. In this course, we explore the validity of this claim. Do schools help make American society more equal by reducing the importance of class, race, and gender as sources of inequality, or do schools simply reinforce existing inequalities and reproduce pre-existing social relations? Topics covered include unequal resources among schools, sorting practices of students within schools, parents' roles in determining student outcomes, the role of schooling in determining labor market outcomes for individuals, and the use of educational programs as a remedy for poverty. This is an education-focused course.

The United States is beset by many serious social problems such as educational inequality, extreme poverty alongside unparalleled abundance, crime and deviance, health disparities, mass incarceration, and the persistence of discrimination along lines of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, class, gender, and sexuality. Course materials are designed to engage student learning, illustrate the distinctive features of the sociological perspective, and to start you thinking sociologically about yourself and the broader world. To think sociologically requires you to recognize that our contemporary world, with its enduring cultural, political, and economic institutions, is as much a social product as we are. In this course, students will learn to take a sociological perspective not only in examining the causes, consequences, and solutions to some of society’s most troubling social problems, but also in taking a critical look at their own perceptions of problems.

Informal learning environments--museums, zoos, after-school clubs, Citizen Science programs--provide a wealth of educational opportunities for people of all ages to pursue and cultivate a wide range of interests. Within these settings, learners often are free to choose the topics in which to immerse themselves and the extent to which they participate in given activities. This course will explore: 1) what learning looks like within different informal environments; 2) a variety of educational approaches commonly found in such environments; and 3) the role(s) that informal learning can play within a broader educational landscape. The class will take at least one field trip to a local informal learning space to observe and investigate learning within these environments firsthand.

Welcome to Understanding Societies. This course introduces students to the exciting field of sociology in order to enable them to more clearly understand how people's behaviors and life outcomes are deeply influenced by social structures, as well as how their own actions help to perpetuate and change these social structures. Course readings and discussion will focus on a variety of topics including socialization, social inequality, race, class, gender, education, law and crime, and cultural globalization. Through this course, students will gain skills and knowledge that will enable them to better understand and critique the society in which they live and the ways that it impacts their own lives.

What is college? How do students experience it? How is it structured? How does it contribute to the development of adulthood or, possibly, to the extension of childhood? How do different types of colleges differ, and how does higher education vary around the world? We’ll investigate the goals of college, student life, learning, athletics, entertainment, social and racial inequality, gender and sexuality, mental health and wellbeing, drawing on published research, our own experiences, and our own research findings.

Liberal education is one of the greatest cultural achievements of the long Western tradition. But what's the point? And what exactly do we mean by liberal education? Is it education for free people or education to make people free? A people, a group, or just the individual? Privilege or liberation? We will ask why you are pursuing a liberal education, and study where it came from, how it has developed, what are its practices, and what are its justifications. We shall divide our focus between the theory and practice of education. Theorists will include Plato and other ancient, medieval, and early modern thinkers, but we shall devote considerable time to American experiments with liberal education (proponents, critics, opponents). Here we shall read selections from Booker T. Washington, John Dewey, Mortimer Adler, but also the Brazilian Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and contemporary self-described culture warriors. On the practice side, we will consider the materials and conditions of education at various places and times. We shall also practice ourselves some of the ancient and early modern techniques (of writing, reading, memorizing, and performing).

Design thinking has emerged as a powerful methodology to catalyze breakthrough innovation for an array of complex business, social and humanitarian challenges. Business and industry have embraced design thinking as one of the most potent drivers of innovation, growth and prosperity for its’ deeply human-centered approach to problem solving. During this fast paced, hybrid, hands-on journey through the design thinking process, students will immerse themselves in a series of overlapping modules that introduce the various phases in the design thinking process and familiarize students with the tools and techniques. This course will unleash your creativity and ingenuity in addressing problems through a human centered framework and mindset, applying this methodology to a vast array of human-centered problems, and complementing disciplines from science and engineering to business and the liberal arts. This course fulfills a Core Curriculum Liberal Arts 4 Way of Knowing (Arts) as well as the gateway to the Collaborative Innovation minor and cross-listed with other minors including: Sustainability, Computing & Digital Technologies, Education, Schooling & Society, Entrepreneurship and Anthropology.

Grounded in educational psychology theories, this course will explore constructs of conscientiousness, perseverance, grit, growth mindset, and resilience. We will discover how social-emotional learning (SEL) competencies of self-awareness and self-management can be utilized to build personal resilience as learners in tumultuous times. The course will include applications to the current reality of learning during the COVID pandemic, while also considering how resilience is continuously developed in one's self and others in various contexts in the future.

This course explores topics related to language and identity in teaching, literacy research, theory, and practice. This course specifically foregrounds issues related to the Latinx experience in American schooling contexts with a focus on gender, and other identity markers that intersect with gender such as race, class, ethnicity, and (dis)ability. From an educational perspective, Latinx student populations in schools are increasing across the nation and yet far too often school curricula, quality bilingual and dual language educational offerings, and teacher preparation programs are slow to catch up to the demographic shifts. This course will further explore how Latinx identities factor into conceptualizations and practices of children's play, literacy activities, language use, and classroom behaviors of both teachers and students. By exploring culturally sustaining pedagogies and a "funds of knowledge" approach, we will seek to answer the following questions: How might we learn approaches to language and literacy education that narrow the achievement gap as they extend to the language and literacy development of Latinx learners? Moreover, what is the impact upon students when we view identity differences not as deficit, but as resource, thus creating schooling experiences that engage students, foster growth and inform equity? This course will engage students with children's literature, ethnographic exercises, linguistic autobiographies, as well as media and film depictions of contemporary issues facing Latinx students in schools.

This course provides a background in several core areas of the study of human language: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and social aspects of language and language change.

This course offers a comprehensive understanding of digital literacy in relation to teaching and researching language acquisition. Students will learn a variety of digital writing technologies and be trained to think critically about cultural and communicative consequences of the digital media. Students will also gain the critical perspective and literacy tools needed to actively apply in language teaching and researching.

Many students worldwide struggle with standard education models, feeling marginalized despite their unique talents, due to factors like learning differences and cultural barriers. The prevalent "one-size-fits-all" approach fails them, widening the achievement gap. There's a critical need for tech-driven, personalized learning strategies. Explore the exciting crossroads of generative AI and education in this integration course. Learn how to utilize popular tools like ChatGPT, Bing, and Bard to enhance your educational experiences. The course combines hands-on projects with theoretical insights, allowing you to apply AI in content creation, personalized learning, and more. Ethical considerations, such as data privacy and algorithmic bias, are also covered to ensure responsible implementation. Students will explore approaches for this real world complex challenge by drawing insights from both learning and computer sciences. They will then synthesize and apply the integrated knowledge acquired from these interdisciplinary perspectives. The course concludes with a look at the future of AI in education. Whether you're a lifelong learner, future educator, an edtech visionary, or simply curious about the AI buzz, this course is your gateway. No prior programming experience needed.

Do you find joy in the world of gaming? Have you ever pondered the potential for games to enhance and facilitate learning? Join this semester-long quest and embark on an exciting exploration of a diverse range of games, apps, and simulations designed for educational purposes. Topics include how games work, characteristics of simulations and games (analog & digital), how people learn, XR technologies and more spanning the intersections of learning and interactive media. Students will gain experience reading and interpreting academic research and can prepare to level-up applied critical and analytical skills in the realm of educational technology. Class activities will include gameplay testing, evaluation, discussion, and project work.

This course explores the rapidly evolving field of generative AI and its profound implications for education and society. Students will examine the historical development of AI, the role of the knowledge economy, and its applications in personalized learning. The course will delve into key concepts such as big data, machine learning, large language models, and generative AI, analyzing their impact on communication, education, privacy, ethics, and societal structures. Through a combination of theoretical discussions and hands-on labs, students will gain a comprehensive understanding of how generative AI is transforming teaching, learning, and society at large. A special emphasis will be placed on how generative AI can address educational inequities by providing personalized learning experiences, overcoming resource gaps, and supporting underserved communities.

This once weekly lab session is a mandatory requirement for students enrolled in the Design Thinking course. These sessions focus on practical application of the topics and materials presented in class with students working in teams to employ techniques and methodology on assigned projects. This hands-on lab will having students exploring the research, brainstorming, ideation, iterative prototyping and presentation techniques that lead to creative innovation and disruptive breakthroughs applicable to students of any discipline.

This course examines the complex contemporary and historical factors that obstruct justice and equity in the American education system. Students will consider the ways the persistent inequity in education interrupts human flourishing and inhibits civic engagement. Through conversation, reflection, and encounter students will begin to cultivate a vision of just education informed by an awareness of power, privilege, and positionality. This seminar will help students understand how assertions of dignity and concern for the common good must factor into innovations in both the private and public sectors of education to advance equity and achieve justice for all. This seminar includes a Spring Break immersion to Washington DC to meet with lawmakers, policy experts, and educational advocates.

Take Ten is a research-based conflict resolution curriculum designed at the University of Notre Dame and headquartered at the University's Robinson Take Ten is a research-based conflict resolution curriculum designed at the University of Notre Dame and headquartered at the University's Robinson Community Learning Center. Take Ten's mission is to provide youth with positive alternatives to violence and build their capacity to make more informed choices when faced with conflict. Take Ten volunteers work on a weekly basis with school children of all grades to teach them the skills needed to resolve conflict peacefully. Born as a restorative practice within the scope of a restorative justice lens, Please note, this course has extra required meeting times and/or events outside of the displayed meeting schedule. Please go to this course's designated webpage within the Center for Social Concerns website (http://socialconcerns.nd.edu/) for further details. This course requires an application. To learn more and/or apply please visit https://socialconcerns.nd.edu/seminars.

How does art educate? What knowledge, ancient or new, is available to us in artifacts? This course is aimed at introducing practices of close-looking at art and artifacts in order to further understand them, individually and within their wider context, and unlock their wisdom. We will invite a broad understanding of pedagogical sources to consider how art and artifacts might "instruct" us as well as how we learn from them. Various art objects – paintings, sculptures, prints, and photographs – will be experienced and examined across the rich array of campus collections and archives. Through close-looking and visual and comparative analysis we will expand our learning and develop our practices of devotion to art in ways applicable to other mediums of wisdom as well as art.

In this course, students will engage with the critical developmental role of play in childhood and examine the inequities that affect access to play opportunities in diverse communities. This course integrates theoretical frameworks with hands-on community engagement, encouraging students to explore how play contributes to cognitive, socioemotional, physical and moral growth in children. Through readings, discussions, and case studies, students will critically examine social, economic, and cultural factors that limit access to play in various communities. Each student will partner with a local elementary school to coach recess activities for two hours each week. This practical experience will allow students to implement play strategies, observe dynamics in play, and directly engage with children in the community. Students will develop a research project analyzing the effects of their coaching experience on children's play and social interactions. Note: Students in this class must be available to coach recess one day per week between the hours of 10:30am and 12:30pm. Access to transportation is helpful but not required.

This course invites students into a personal journey of reflection and discernment as they consider post-graduate life and education-related careers. A one-credit, pass/fail seminar, it features experts from the Notre Dame and South Bend communities who work in a range of fields, from education consulting and technology to child advocacy, academic advising, and community outreach. Throughout the course, students will have access to a number of faculty and staff who are available to assist with career planning, both now and in the future. Students are expected to attend all classes, keep a journal reflecting on each presentation and how that career may or may not apply to their interests, and create a resume as it pertains to one career option presented during the course.

This course will focus on the history of Indigenous education and the modern Native schooling experience. Indigenous communities are revitalizing their cultural traditions and knowledge in diverse ways through innovative educational practices. However, too often stories highlighting this meaningful exchange of teaching and learning go undertold. The course will provide ample opportunities to learn from such communities and individuals carrying out this type of transformational education through both class meetings and an immersion trip. Priority topics for exploration include truth and healing, Indigenous language revitalization, the intersection of Lakota culture and Catholic identity in a school, food sovereignty, and other relevant themes. The full experience will consist of five in-person meetings and an immersion trip over Fall Break to Maȟpíya Lúta - Red Cloud school in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. The immersion component is a unique opportunity to spend time with and learn from educators and students in a Native American Catholic school.

What is the ongoing impact of Native American boarding schools for survivors, their descendants, and Indigenous communities as a whole? How are schools in Indian Country today revitalizing culture, language, and traditions? These are the types of questions this course will investigate as we explore the history of Indigenous education, the modern Native schooling experience, and the links that connect them. With a special emphasis on providing opportunities to interact directly with Indigenous educators in the local Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, Native American Catholic schools, and numerous other spaces, this course is guided through listening to and learning from authentic stories and distinct perspectives. Additionally, our academic inquiry will prioritize theories and frameworks formed by Indigenous scholars such as survivance, storywork, resurgent education, and decolonial theory.

You’ve had an opportunity to try on the role of teaching over the summer, and now you want a space to process the experience. This 1-credit course is a discussion-based seminar designed to create a community of reflection around the variety of teaching roles, both domestic and abroad, taken on by students who participated in a summer teaching program of one sort or another. We will make space to reflect on what you learned about the dispositions and approaches that enabled you to come to know a new community and its context, and to know the ways in which your students embrace the opportunities and challenges of their local educational systems. We will also explore what your experiences taught you about effective classroom strategies and techniques, ranging from planning and instructional pedagogy to assessment to engagement with the broader community. We will ask questions of ourselves and of each other about how our teaching experiences inform next steps and questions in vocational discernment, a conversation that could help you imagine what might be next for an educational system and your potential role in it.

This course examines the recent history of the American university. It asks how the last four decades of political-economic restructuring often described as “neoliberalism” – skyrocketing personal debt, privatization of public goods, and more – have reshaped its social function and institutional structure, its labor struggles and relation to local communities. Through readings in critical university studies, ethnic studies, and American literature, we will build a conceptual vocabulary to critically engage these transformations and, in the process, ask fundamental questions about the modern university: what it is, who it is for, and what it might yet be.

We are living through a watershed moment in United States history. Structural racism is at the forefront of the national discourse. Yet, the threat that racism holds on our nation's most cherished ideals of democracy and justice is hardly new. Generations of activists, scholars, and everyday people have fought and persevered to bring about social, cultural, and policy change. This course engages deeply with topics relevant to the national discourse on racial and ethnic relations in the U.S. The first part of the course examines key concepts, focusing on the social construction of race and ethnicity, prejudice, and discrimination. The second part reviews the historical experiences of Native Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and African Americans. The third and final part of the course centers on four critical issues that are especially relevant in 2020: (1) immigration; (2) political disenfranchisement; (3) racial and ethnic disparities in health; and (4) racism in the criminal justice system.

We frequently encounter statements or claims based on statistics, such as: "Women earn less than men," "The American population is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse," or "Married people are healthier than unmarried people." On what information are these statements based? What kinds of evidence support or refute such claims? How can we assess their accuracy? This course will show students how to answer these sorts of questions by interpreting and critically evaluating statistics commonly used in the analysis of social science data. Hands-on data analysis and interpretation are an important part of the course. You will gain the skills to conduct quantitative data analysis using a statistical software package. You should finish the course with the ability to interpret, question, and discuss statistics accurately and with an understanding of which type of statistic is appropriate for different kinds of data and research questions. No prior statistical knowledge is required. This course is ideal for students interested in the social and/or life sciences as well as business and/or law. Students are strongly encourage to take the optional course SOC 31903, "Tutorial for SOC Statistics".

A survey of the theories and methods relating to basic processes in learning and memory from both biological and cognitive perspectives.

A lecture course providing a survey of higher level cognitive processes such as memory, problem solving, learning, concept formation, and language.

A three-credit course in writing pedagogy for students working as tutors in the University Writing Center.

Enrolling in school does not guarantee that children acquire the human capital that their schooling should provide. Also, in some countries a large fraction of children still are not finishing primary school, and there are still millions of children who never attend school at all. In this course, we will review the impact of various types of educational interventions on schooling in the Global South. We explore the rationale behind specific policies and the evidence (or lack of) in support of their effectiveness in improving education outcomes. The aim is to engage in broader debates on the challenges facing effective education policy. Students will critically evaluate real-life policy options in different contexts, as well as propose potential innovations. By the end of the course, students will possess an analytical framework that allows them to think clearly about the impacts of alternative education policies, as well as be able to judge the quality of existing evidence.

This course combines economic theory and methods to study the production and delivery of education. We will apply economic principles to understand the rationale for particular education approaches, policies, and programs and use an economic lens to explore their potential impact. We will also learn about applying analytic tools to examine the effects of schooling as well as specific education interventions and reforms. Students will read empirical research and will practice being critical consumers of policy arguments and research findings. They will also complete problem sets and writing assignments with the goals of 1) using economic principles to inform policy debates about education investments, 2) employing evidence to evaluate the impact of education policies and programs, and 3) developing skills in conducting original research on education. Substantive topics will span early childhood education, K-12 schooling, and higher education with a focus on the role of incentives, prices, and markets throughout. The course will explore teacher labor markets and teacher effectiveness, school choice, and accountability, and will include discussion of international contexts.

The course focuses on promoting equity for children through a community engagement experience that offers supervised engaged learning opportunities for students to work with leaders in churches, schools, sports programs, and restorative justice outreach. The course begins with an interdisciplinary inquiry into the causes of generational poverty. The first part of the course explores the social, economic, and cultural causes of poverty. The second part examines the challenges that schools and colleges; youth sports programs; public health institutions; and the juvenile justice system face in serving children living in high poverty neighborhoods. The final part of the course focuses on collaborative approaches to stopping the cycle of poverty.

Critical pedagogy, education intended to inspire consciousness and action for change, has the potential to become one of the most relevant and powerful tools in urban education today. This course will consider the potential of conceptual and empirical work in critical pedagogy and cultural studies to inform, confront and transform many of the persistent challenges we presently face in urban schools, classrooms, and out-of-school programs. The course begins with an examination of the historical antecedents of critical pedagogy, from Catholic Social Teaching, the Western philosophical tradition and "Othered" traditions such as the African-American and Latin American social movement traditions, liberation theology, and Postcolonialism. The course will then examine the theory and research of critical pedagogists such as Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire, Peter McLaren, Henry Giroux, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Antonia Darder, and bell hooks. The second half of the course will focus on cultural studies and, in particular, the critical uses of popular culture in urban classrooms and out of school contexts. Lectures, discussions, and student activities will focus on hip-hop and spoken word poetry, film, television, mass media consumption and production and their implications for transformative work in city schools and out-of-school settings.

THIS CLASS HAS NO ASSIGNED READINGS! That's right, there is no reading for this class. Instead, you'll learn how millions of Americans are coming to know their history, their science, their neighbors, their sexuality, their art and so much more, and you'll do it all through listening to some of the most engaging (and some of the least engaging) podcasts available. We'll take a look at primary sources that collaborate and dispel some of what we're hearing and we'll think about the integral ways that podcasts are shaping our nation and our national interests. We'll even delve into how podcasts in other lands celebrate and eviscerate America, Americans, and Americanism. Double up on your homework and your workout as you listen your way into exciting and engaging topics that we'll explore in class using the methodologies of the best scholarship in American Studies, History, and Education, Schooling, and Society. This class is for all of those who love American Studies, great stories, researching and discovering, and can't wait to get their headphones on and delve into the best stories we as a society know how to tell.

In 1975, the African-American writer Ishmael Reed put culture at the center of politics: “If I have you revering my art, behaving like me and adopting my psychology, then I’ve got you. If I’ve got your head, I’ve got you.” Confronted with the whiteness of U.S. publishing and school curricula, Reed and his peers saw literature as a key front in this broader struggle over the making and unmaking of American identity. Yet the question of literature’s contribution to the struggle elicited stark disagreement. Would it counter racial stereotype with accurate representation or refuse the burden of racial representativeness? Would it lay claim to the American nation on behalf of the racially minoritized, or throw in with different political horizons? Would it address the white reader unfamiliar with the realities of racial oppression, or the non-white reader seeking a different relation to histories already lived? These disagreements would only intensify in the following decades as the call for multicultural representation became increasingly institutionalized – with syllabi and publishing undergoing modest diversification, and universities framing racial difference as a strategic asset. Moving from the late 20th century to the present, our course attends to how these political ambitions and desires informed the writing, publishing, and teaching of American literature by writers of color. It asks how these authors not only engaged in activism by literary means, but also reckoned with the artistic and political dilemmas that attended this doubled pursuit. To this end, the bulk of our readings will draw from literary fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, including authors like Gloria Anzaldua, Paul Beatty, Maxine Hong Kingston, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Wendy Trevino.

ESS 30600 will provide an overview of the array of research methods used in educational settings. Topics covered include formulating research questions, data collection methodologies (survey methods, experimental design, observational methods, and interviews), analyzing the collected data, and interpreting results in context. Students will read and discuss different approaches to educational research, examine educational research, and engage in research activities. At the end of the course, students should be able to 1) critically review education research, 2) recognize the appropriate research method to address their question of interest, and 3) further study and engage in educational research.

This course focuses on selected legal and policy issues related to K-12 education in the United States. A central theme is the intersection of K-12 schooling and the state, with a particular focus on Constitutional issues of religious freedom and establishment, student speech and privacy, parental choice, educational opportunity, and education reform trends such as charter schools and accountability measures. Questions examined over the course of the semester include: What are the most basic obligations of the state with regard to its regulation of K-12 education? What are the most basic rights of parents in this regard? In what ways does the 1st Amendment protect - and limit - the speech and privacy rights of K-12 schoolchildren? In what ways may the state accommodate K-12 schools with an explicitly religious character? What are the Constitutional requirements with regard to religious speech or expression within K-12 public schools? To what degree is the principle of equality manifest in the form of educational opportunity? How has this changed over time? In what ways have education reform trends such as charter schooling and increased accountability changed the policy landscape of K-12 education?

Educational Psychology examines questions about development, learning and achievement in schools. In this course we will explore fundamental questions such as (a) What is intelligence? Is it fixed or changeable? What are the implications of conceptions of intelligence for achievement? (b) How does learning occur? What are the implications of different theories of learning? Is there a "correct" theory of learning? Does learning differ in different subject areas? (c) What motivates student learning? Can instruction be "motivational"? (d) What is "good" instruction? How do theories of learning relate to instructional practices? (e) How do aspects of school context, such as interaction with peers and teachers, and school culture, influence learning, motivation and achievement?

This seminar explores the intersection of the physical realities of urban environments, race, and education. We will pay particular attention to space as a factor impacting children and families. As a group, we will work to answer a cluster of questions surrounding the course topic in a systematic, interdisciplinary format. Questions may include: How does the physical landscape/structure of communities and schools matter to urban education? How do high concentrations of poverty and racial segregation impact curriculum, school culture, and neighborhood? How does school choice, early childhood programming, college preparatory and after-school programs factor into the landscape of urban education? What are "best practices" involved with teaching in urban environments? The final question we will work on as a group will be: What do we know about race and urban landscapes that can help propel positive micro- and macro-level change for our educational system? This course demands a high level of class participation and student initiative.

This course covers the various issues relevant to the current early childhood education landscape. This includes theories of early learning and child development, policy development in the United States, the issues of inequality and the achievement gap, and research on interventions or "what works" in early childhood programming. The advantage to understanding the theories of child development, the policy context and the intervention research is that it gives future teachers and future policymakers a foundational premise upon which to grow, analyze, learn and teach. Topics covered will include: Theories of Child Development (Infant Schools to Present), Head Start and the CCDBG, State Preschool, Inequality and the Achievement Gap in the Early Years and Interventions in Early Childhood (HighScope/Perry Preschool, Abecedarian and Chicago Parent Studies, Head Start Research). The goal of this class is to come away with a greater understanding of the language, the history, the goals and the possibilities in this policy area as well as its connections to other social welfare programs and to K-12 schooling. Students will become more fluent in the language of early childhood education and will gain the foundational knowledge of past and current theories, laws, policies and educational interventions.

Science education occupies a unique position among the school-based disciplines. Across many sectors, the perceived role of science education is to prepare students to enter into and succeed in scientific fields. It is argued that if an advanced economy, like the United States, wishes to maintain its economic relevance, than each generation must be prepared to engage in scientific and technological innovation and that school science is responsible in fulfilling this obligation. But only approximately 5% of all occupations are STEM related - what happens to the 95% of students who wish not to pursue STEM careers? What are the needs of an educated citizen in today's society? Although most goals for science education focus on the development of students' understanding of the material world, this focus on canonical science often presents the discipline as a ‘rhetoric of conclusions' rather than a messy, complex, highly creative, and tentative enterprise. The consequence has been that many students are alienated from science, thus undermining one of the fundamental aims of science education. This course explores the complex and contested terrain of policy and practice in science education by focusing on four major themes: 1) The nature of science and the nature of school science; 2) Policies surrounding science curriculum; 3) The practice of science education; and 4) New approaches to science education.

Public and private K-12 school choice programs and policies are at the forefront of educational reform efforts and research in the United States. We will begin the course by exploring the history of school choice in the United States, from the foundation of religious and non-religious private schools, to the advent of magnet schools as part of the Civil Rights Movement, to contemporary choice programs such as charter schools, private school vouchers, educational savings accounts, and inter-district public school choice. Next, we will examine the roots of school choice through various theoretical lenses, including political, sociological, cultural, economic, and legal perspectives. In the last part of the course we will evaluate and critique rigorous research studies that examine the impacts of school choice on student educational outcomes. We will give special attention to these educational impacts on students who are racial or ethnic minorities, students from low income families, and students with diverse learning abilities. Over the course, we will reflect on the effects of implementing school choice programs and policies on traditional public schools and their students, especially in the contexts with a wide array of choice such as South Bend locally and Indiana more broadly.

This course will use Notre Dame as a physical place and as a force for good in America, but also as an idea and ideal. We will trace the history of Notre Dame from before the arrival of Father Sorin and learn about the education of the Native people who resided (and worshiped) here and then watch Notre Dame both evolve and grow. We will simultaneously look at some other key colleges around the United States and track their growth as well. The course will study how Notre Dame goes from being just an idea on another continent to a small chapel in the backwoods of Northern Indiana, to a religious pseudo-trade school, to the place where ideas are not only tested, but also created and how Notre Dame becomes competitive with some of the other schools we study. This is the class to take to understand the complicated relationships that states and the federal government have with their schools. We'll trace national trends and study primary sources and, to be consistent, we will also create our own knowledge from the resources we have in our archives and the resources that fans have collected from around the world. We will see the injustices and struggles that higher education creates and the tremendous good that comes when the nation's universities create knowledge that not only changes lives but saves some as well (though at what costs?). This class is the place to learn American history through the watchful countenance of Mary facing South in hopes to stand in harmony and as another example of Liberty Enlightening the World. Notre Dame is a global university; as such, we must understand what that means and how being players in global relationships comes with the responsibility to welcome and make ourselves available to be welcomed--not just to teach, but to understand and recognize when we are the guest and when we are the host. We'll watch these things and more as we struggle to understand higher education, especially Notre Dame, and the potential for good. #Pokagonband, #CatholicsinAmerica, #higheredandND, #footballspreadsND, #1womenshoopsandtitle9, #reslife-thegoodway, #community, #yourGod2, #SMC-Yeah-you-know-me, #McGraw, #Rockne, #Financialaid, #Alumnigivig, #NDclub_Anytown, #Reagan, #TherealGeorgeGipp, #Zahm, #NDatWar-ROTC, #SYRandMe2, #Collegeisnotstagnate, #mentalhealthandschool, #college-drugs-rocknrollandinbetween, #priestsandnuns, #Nationsmostreferencedschools, #lovethee

As calls to defund police and abolish prisons have gone mainstream in the United States, many who encounter those demands struggle to imagine alternatives to our punitive criminal legal system, especially when it comes to violent crime. This one-credit course serves as a hands-on introduction to transformative justice -- a feminist political framework for responding to violence without relying on punishment, incarceration, or policing. We will learn about the history and philosophy of transformative justice (TJ) as it has developed in Black, immigrant, and Indigenous communities over many generations. We will read theoretical works, case studies, and personal narratives from scholars, practitioners, and community organizers seeking to solve the problem of violence without creating more violence. Most importantly, we will cultivate skills to build restorative and transformative responses to violence, abuse, and harm in our own relationships and communities. Our virtual class sessions will include a mix of discussion and activities, with an emphasis on collaboration and skill-building.

The title of Duane and Capshaw Smith's book, Who Writes for Black Children? African American Children's Literature Before 1900 captures the essence of this course and serves as our foundation. We will explore the long rich history of literature for African American children by African American authors and challenge deficit, dominant narratives about literacy practices of African American communities before 1900 up to the present day. The majority of the course will focus on literature for children from the 20th century up to recent publications, trends in children's literature that have provided a platform or silenced authors, and how social, cultural, and political factors have controlled whose work is published, which texts are published and distributed, and the impact this has on how individuals and communities view themselves and others. We will draw on a range of literary theories to analyze literature and each student will develop an in-depth author study of an artist of their choice with a strong focus on historical, cultural, and social influences and contexts. Throughout the semester, we will explore the power of literature for disrupting, transforming, and challenging negative and racist ideologies that perpetuate inequality and injustice in American society.

From their origins, the liberal arts have been associated with the freedom that their name implies. These are the arts practiced by free persons, who are not forced to serve any ends but those chosen by themselves, and they are the arts that ultimately create free individuals and societies. Nearly co-original with the liberal arts, however, is the critique that only a privileged few, limited by perceived ability or circumstance, can access this liberation. Reading material from the social sciences and humanities, this course will consider whether and how the liberal arts can be truly liberating for all people.

The purpose of this course is to provide students with an overview of the origins, concerns, goals, and approaches of education reform past, present, and future. We will explore the breadth of tactics and policy mechanisms employed by reformers, examining the underlying assumptions and theories of action ascribed to each. We will analyze the extent to which various reform efforts have been successful while concurrently defining and redefining the benchmarks for success as we explore questions such as: Who and what are schools for? What should the goals of improvement be? How do we best improve schools and who should decide? What are the origins and implications of differing policy and reform strategies? What assumptions drive different policy levers (i.e. turnaround, incentives, mandates, capacity-building, high-stakes accountability) and how do those in turn shape implementation and outcomes?

Drawing on Lave and Wenger's (1991) theory of legitimate peripheral participation, this Community Based Learning course is structured to allow students to participate in two communities: (1) an elementary classroom during English Language Arts instruction time to both observe the teacher's pedagogy and work directly with children and (2) as a developing literacy researcher with students in the course. Students will learn about research based best practices in literacy instruction during seminars and apply these strategies and approaches in the classroom while working with small groups and individual children. Students will also learn about and apply qualitative approaches to data collection and analysis to study 2-3 children's growth over the semester and to make meaningful and insightful connections between theory and practice. Since the majority of students' time will be dedicated to read-alouds and teaching multicultural children's literature, students will develop an extensive annotated bibliography of children's literature to deepen understanding and appreciation for literature for children. On-Site: Students should plan to spend 3 hours per week at Muessel Elementary School (based on when ELA is taught, typically in the morning, and ND students' schedule). Beginning Week 3, we will only meet on Tuesdays for seminar on campus. Students are responsible for their own transportation.

While schools must foster cognitive development and academic achievement, they should also be dedicated to students' mental, emotional, and behavioral growth as well. This course explores holistic education, one that attends to the development of the whole person, as a means for safe, nurturing, and healthy child development. The course considers influences at the student, family, classroom, school, and policy levels. Topics include student/family assets; resources and staffing for student mental health; social and emotional learning; effective school discipline and behavioral interventions; school violence prevention; physical health and academic achievement; and district, state, federal, and faith-based frameworks for supporting mental, emotional, and behavioral health.

What is a mathematical idea you learned in school? How did you share what you learned? The purpose of this course is to examine children as individuals who construct understanding of the world around them through the study of mathematics. This course focuses on how adults working with children can mediate this process through learning opportunities, eliciting thinking, and providing support to encourage further understanding. In addition, we will reflect on how, as adults, we may misinterpret student understandings and either over- or underestimate what students’ knowledge and skill, which may impact future educational opportunities. Using this lens, we will consider the goals of mathematics education, current debates, and evidence for how children develop mathematical understanding using research articles and commentaries to guide our discussions and analysis. As a component of this course, we will interview children at an off-site facility during class hours to learn about their knowledge and experiences in mathematics.

forthcoming from Dr. Jodene Morrell

This course engages students in an ongoing project to build an equitable and developmentally oriented youth sports system in South Bend, Chicago, and high poverty urban communities throughout the United States. The first part of the course will draw on the latest research in the sports sciences, developmental psychology, and education to identify the basic principles of youth sports coaching and mentoring. The students will receive preparation in identifying and responding to the chronic stress and trauma that affects a sizable proportion of the children they will be working with. The second part of the course will help students to continue to develop their coaching and mentoring competencies while studying generational child poverty in the Unites States.

Students will be introduced to Literatura Infantil y Juvenil (LIJ) in the Spanish-speaking world through a combination of considerable reading of LIJ across genres and levels and a critical perspective of LIJ via academic text and articles. Books read will include many award winners by prolific writers and illustrators of LIJ, as well as widely known writers for adults who have also written children's books. Among genres read will be folklore, narrative, fiction (representing afro-latino, indigenous and other multi-cultural groups; contemporary, realistic, historical), short story, and poetry. In addition, students will develop criteria for evaluating quality LIJ through a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives. Finally, there is a Community-Based Learning (CBL) component where students will share LIJ with the local Latino community through CBL projects and a reading program with Latino youth. Pre-requiste: ROSP 20202 or above or placement by exam. This course can count as an advanced elective towards the major. Taught in Spanish. Students must have a Language Exam Score between 440 and 600 to enroll in this class.

An overview of the principles of language structure, the processes of first and second language acquisition, and the issues involved in assessing language proficiency with special attention paid to the application of linguistic knowledge to the multilingual and multicultural school setting.

This course is an overview of various methods used to teach a second language to non-native speakers of all ages. Topics include commonly-used methods and techniques, principles of second language pedagogy, connections between theory and classroom practice, and the roles of teachers and learners.

This course assists students to develop an ability to describe and analyze words, phrases, clauses, and sentences of contemporary English and understand usage rules. Students explore how an individual's use of grammar affects human communication and how they can use the knowledge of grammar to recognize, describe, and address usage problems in context.

This course will examine the journey from pre-digital to digital, aka the "digital transformation", in higher education. We will be focusing on online learning, the use of artificial intelligence, and XR, and their impact on teaching and learning. Through a series of case studies, readings, and guest speakers, we will explore how higher education institutions approach digital transformation and the opportunities and challenges brought about by new technologies. Students will gain hands-on experience working on projects with higher education professionals responsible for assessing, implementing, and stewarding digital transformations related to teaching and learning at Notre Dame. This course will benefit those interested in learning technologies and organizational evolution related to technology.

“Innovative Practices in K-12 Education” introduces students to the past and present technology usage in the K-12 classroom, from the innovative to the controversial to the catastrophic. We will consider early attempts at using technology in education as well as barriers to innovation and counter-movements to remove all technology from instruction. Throughout the course, we will discuss ways to evaluate innovative pedagogical practices based on educational research best practices. Students will explore the limits of technology use in the classroom and determine what is helpful and harmful in creating learners who can think critically and solve real-world problems. Topics covered include what defines “technology” in the classroom, disruptive innovation, gamification, personalized and blended learning, inclusive education, and the emerging use (and possibilities) of AI in the classroom.

The popularity of massive open online courses (MOOCs) and shifting to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic have witnessed the power of learning analytics (LA) of using large-scale learning data to support the teaching and learning practices. Although promising milestones have been achieved, the widespread adoption of LA is still at its infancy stage. In this course, we will introduce the most current topics in LA including: What are the main concerns in the LA field? How do we build artificial intelligence (AI) models to identify patterns in historical learning data and make predictions about the future learning? How to use Text Mining approaches to analyze forum discussion data to track changes in student emotional status? What are the data visualization skills we should have to support the analytical processes and present results? Apart from this, we will also talk about the topics about ethical issues such as the unintentional discriminations from AI algorithms, trustworthy concerns in AI predictions as well as privacy concerns related to large availability of learning data. Students in this course will be engaged in multiple projects based on publicly available learning datasets with modularized python function blocks provided for the corresponding tasks.

This course is a survey of the field of environmental education. Students will: 1) gain an understanding of environmental literacy, 2) explore the foundations of environmental education, 3) learn the personal responsibilities of the environmental educator, 4) design environmental education curriculum, 5) foster pedagogical approaches for effective learning, and 6) develop skills for evaluation and assessment of environmental education curricula. Class members will have the opportunity to focus assignments to meet their personal aspirations for environmental education within their career goals.

In June 2020, prompted by the horrific killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, our nation awakened to the brutality of institutional racism and the violence to human dignity it has wrought in communities of color throughout America's history. The movement for racial justice was renewed in vigor with nationwide protests and calls for action. Although the protests of 2020 have largely been a response to a crisis surrounding police violence, the calls to action have focused attention on the breadth of systemic racism in all facets of American life. In this course, students will engage weekly with a single event or concept, drawn from a variety of disciplines, necessary to understand and dismantle systemic racism. The course centers around a weekly guest-lecture series featuring authors, public intellectuals, faith leaders, and external and internal members of the academy. In each class period, the guest expert provides a sophisticated introduction to a discrete racial justice topic. Some lectures address historical events not widely known (e.g., the Tulsa massacre or the arrival of the first slave ship in the Americas in 1619); others address current racial inequities (e.g., the wealth gap, health outcomes, criminal justice, voter suppression); still others examine broad concepts (e.g., intersectionality, Catholic teaching on racism). Specific topics to be determined by expert availability. Students prepare for the sessions by researching the speaker or topic and preparing thoughtful questions to be posed during the guests' visit. Students also participate in at least two small group discussions and, at the conclusion of the semester, are required to produce a short reflective writing piece. The entire course will be offered via zoom for all participants.

This course provides an overview of the principles of language structure, the processes of first and second language acquisition, and the issues involved in assessing language proficiency with special attention paid to the application of linguistic knowledge to the multilingual and multicultural school setting.

What happens in our brains when we experience inclusion and exclusion? What does it mean to have a sense of belonging and why does it matter? What attitudes, skills, and knowledge do we need to develop to cultivate more inclusive workplaces, classrooms, and societies? This course explores how our brains process information and develop, which in turn impacts our attitudes and behaviors in various intercultural situations. We will explore experiences of belonging, inclusion, and exclusion using frameworks and concepts from neuroscience, intercultural communication, and educational and social psychology to examine these and other related questions. This course is designed to facilitate students’ reflection and development of skills and knowledge to effectively and appropriately interact with individuals from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. We will engage in various immersive learning activities that challenge our ways of thinking, seeing, hearing, doing, feeling, and even tasting. These activities are designed to help us better understand ourselves and others and to develop our capacity to facilitate belonging in the workplace and post-secondary classrooms.

The Global Childhoods Practicum seeks to provide students with an evidence-based framework and skillset to implement an improvement science approach to research and program learning. Improvement science is explicitly designed to accelerate learning-by-doing. For the practicum aspect of this course, students will work closely with faculty and research mentors involved in our operational programs in the Global South aimed to foster resilience and improve educational and psychological outcomes for children facing adversity (i.e., contexts of deprivation and/or danger). This semester-long practicum will focus on improvement science research and learning agendas in the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child's (GC-DWC's) operational programs in Haiti and India.

The early childhood years are a time of heightened biological and environmental responsiveness that coincides with the most rapid period of neurological growth in human development. These crucial years build the foundation for cognitive, emotional, and social competencies, where essential skills such as language acquisition, motor skills, and social interactions are developed; the experiences and interactions a child has can significantly influence their ability to reach these milestones. Failure to thrive in the early years is associated with not only short-term physical, cognitive, and social-emotional maladjustment but also poor adult health and labor market outcomes. Investing in this critical period of early childhood development (ECD) is one of the most cost-effective ways to address the negative individual and societal effects of poverty, and can significantly enhance developmental outcomes, setting the stage for lifelong well-being. This interdisciplinary course explores the intersection of ECD science and poverty alleviation initiatives in low- and middle-income countries. It aims to provide students with a solid understanding of how early brain development is influenced by socio-economic factors and how evidence-based interventions can promote brain health and school readiness while also addressing developmental disparities. Students will engage with current research, theoretical frameworks, and practical strategies to promote optimal development in impoverished and crisis-affected contexts and prevent intergenerational poverty. This course is relevant for students interested in applying the science of early child development to social issues and working in fields related to psychology, neuroscience, education, public health, or social policy.

The L'Arche Seminar is an invitation to think deeply about and observe directly a community (of people with and without disabilities) living together in the spirit of the beatitudes. Students will also witness how living in a L'Arche community has influenced the lives of the core members, assistants, and others. Students will likely have some opportunity to communicate with other organizations about their advocacy and policy work that relates to people with disabilities. The class sessions leading up to the immersion will cover topics such as: Catholic Social Tradition and a framework for Solidarity; Spirituality lived in Community; Policy, Advocacy, and Discrimination; Vanier on Becoming Human.

This course strives to form a new community of inquiry at the intersection of religion, education, and democracy. It is at such an intersection that the atrophy of each—the central problem to be grappled with in the course—is seen by many to be caused by the values of the other. Are such claims true? Are religion, education, and democracy so incommensurable today that together they can no longer facilitate social coherence, despite the fact that robust educational systems have long bolstered democratic and religious institutions alike? With the discipline of education as its platform and Catholicism, among other religious voices, as its particular conversation partner, the course examines historical, contemporaneous, and ecclesial resources, including Catholic notions of the common good, fraternal humanism, and ecological conversion, to ask, among other questions: What has religion to do with present anti-democratic trends, and what can be done educationally to reverse them? How do we understand education differently when we view it from the perspective of religion, and vice versa? Why is education so prevalent in and fundamental to religion, especially Catholicism, in the United States? As people call for book bans, students will write on how debate, discussion, and dissension are normed and modeled differently by religious and secular philosophies of education. They will also write, assuming a Catholic philosophy of education as normative, on what relationship religion should have with education if the latter is fundamental to democracy while democracy itself serves as the guarantor of religious liberty. The goal of the course is to produce a philosophy of education that engenders in the current generation of students responsibility to the American proposition—to reference the Jesuit John Courtney Murray’s paradigm—and what we can call a religiously-informed, normative vision of the promise of “America” today.

Research is structured thinking and doing that begins with a question or a problem. We learn research by doing it again and again alongside an experienced researcher. Doing research is most fun and rewarding when the questions and answers matter for the communities we live in. This seminar offers Notre Dame undergraduates the opportunity to do mentored social science and legal research in response to research challenges confronting South Bend School Corporation Board members and administrators in the area of educational opportunity.

The aim of the introductory course is to introduce some basic questions about the nature and goals of education, its history, and theoretical explanations of influences on learning, teaching, and schooling. We will incorporate both classic and current texts. The core course will incorporate several disciplinary perspectives.

The history of American education is the history of America! In the United States, we have a way of trying to utilize education to be a panacea for many societal things including poverty, race, class, gender, and so much more. Join this class to explore the overview of the history of American education and the societal issues assigned to teachers to sort out and how as a nation we continue to strive to find the ‘best’ system of education. This course will explore education themes from pre-K all the way to graduate school with a heavy focus on K-12 education and a look at disparities in the current systems and how those disparities evolved.

Work on a real-world project that can impact Native American education in the present while learning the history that shaped the modern era. Native American Education is deeply intertwined with American history, education, and policy. The current American government is seriously investigating the past uses of education as a tool for assimilation (and worse) in Native American communities. In 2022 the Pope went to Canada and apologized for the role the Church played in the residential boarding schools, and the Subcommittee on Native American issues for the USCCB is investigating the same here in the United States. This course blends primary source historical work with active and engaging projects with Native communities to engage students in both history and historical thought to do consulting and problem-solving that will help shape real policy in the present day! This class promises to be like no other course you’ve had and get you working with others in truly collaborative manners very quickly in the semester. Not in ESS? Write me and see what accommodations we can make!

This course is not for the faint of heart, but will explore the feint, adept, and deft use of Civics and History courses to try and create one ideal American narrative in K-12 classrooms. History in American K-12 classrooms and beyond is always political! Historical thinking is also supposed to be an active way of learning and establishing new ideas when there are new pieces of information or additional epistemologies not a passive regurgitation of facts. Join this class to struggle with how a more representative curriculum might help foster better-rounded citizens and broader critical thinking skills. Historical narratives created and true are installed in American curricula to create ‘good citizens,' but who determines what ‘good' is and who and what ‘citizens' are is an ever-changing pantheon of characters seeking god-like power over the nation's past, with aspirations of helping shape and control the nation's future. This course examines how historical events are molded and taught in curricula in different eras and shows the evolution of textbooks and curriculum firsthand. Students explore how early textbooks think of Native peoples as "Noble Savages" and how that ‘nobility' disappears in later texts. We'll have the opportunity to study the re-shaping of ethnic identities in the United States History curriculum and how the Cold War not only re-configures the size and orientation of the maps in our history books but also how the stories of other nations and their forms of government become commonplace slurs as a way to whip up righteousness for US policies in the Cold War and to quash rising ideologies connected to labor movements and those other nations simultaneously. We'll examine the rise and righteousness of both sides of the current debate over Critical Race Theory in the K-12 classroom and so much more. You will have the opportunity to explore additional historical narratives of Native peoples and many different groups who immigrants by choice, force, and forced annexations and their representations in curricula. This course recognizes the privileges that race, class, and gender has played in creating the historical narrative for K-12 classrooms through the study of the groups who make decisions about what civics and historical lessons are taught to students in American schools in different eras. This course will have writing and research elements go through multiple drafts and the final version of student works is not just academic in nature but is to demonstrate that you can utilize your knowledge and understanding for the good, to in essence show ‘what you are fighting for' in the parlance of all at Notre Dame working to bring academic thinking to the forefront for the common good. This course will require critical thinking, creative solutions and ideas on curricular philosophy, great classroom participation, a willingness to do original historical research, and a tremendous desire to share.

How do today’s biggest education policy debates shape the future of America’s schools? This course invites students to explore the urgent questions at the center of federal and state K-12 policymaking. From the controversy surrounding vouchers and charter schools, to debates over how best to prepare and retain high-quality teachers, to disputes about curriculum and cultural representation, and the ongoing fight for equitable funding—this course will examine the challenges and trade-offs that define education policymaking. Students will study the theoretical foundations of each issue and analyze what the latest research reveals about their impacts on students, schools, and society. A distinctive feature of the course is a series of conversations with leading experts in education policy, practice, and research. These dialogues will give students firsthand insight into how policymakers, practitioners, and researchers grapple with these issues in real time and shape the future of K-12 education.

Central to this course is the study of Shakespeare and Tolkien, both of whom, while separated by over 300 years, nevertheless "stay in the mind." We will examine in-depth Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, and Lord of the Rings, aiming to hone your ability to read closely and carefully and to write strong literary analyses. We will also examine these works in the context of contemporary education (where, for example, students complain about reading in part because they lack the skills and patience to read long or difficult texts), aiming to address questions about the purpose of literature and issues of literacy in our schools today.

In this course, we will challenge the single story/ies U.S. schools and curricula have told about books, characters, and cultural groups by focusing on literature by and about people from various populations that have been traditionally underrepresented in the United States. We will discuss young adult literature from parallel cultures (including possible works by and about African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino/as, Native Americans, Middle Eastern Americans, and other ethnic groups), as well as literature by and about populations traditionally defined by class, religion, ability, gender and sexuality. Course participants will investigate theoretical perspectives, issues, controversies, and educational implications for these texts, including race and racism, whiteness and privilege (in society and in the educational system), and critical literacy. As an extension of the course, we will also examine the young adult literature market and how contemporary media may reinforce or resist the stereotypes, labels, and single stories associated with these cultures. Possible texts include All American Boys, American Born Chinese (graphic novel), a Jacqueline Woodson novel, Openly Straight, a canonical text like To Kill a Mockingbird, Every Day, and several choice options, including a Classic/Newberry text, one text representing a non-abled bodied protagonist, and one contemporary text.

Literacy, or the ability to read and write, may seem a neutral skill set. Wrapped up in any engagement with language, though, is power. This course seeks to investigate the relationship between language and power, unpacking the standards by which a person is deemed "literate" or "illiterate" in U.S. society, and better understanding how literacy, as more than a cognitive skill set, has implications for a person's identity and status. In addition to investigating the larger social (economic, political, and religious) forces that influence people's means of becoming literate, we will explore the implications of these forces in the context of US schooling, and ask what the purpose(s) of language and literacy education might be-especially in a global, multilingual, multiethnic society.

Prior to the 18th century, children were viewed as little adults. The invention of childhood grew during the Age of Enlightenment along with a rapid increase of printed titles (1620: 6,000 vs. end of 18th century: 56,000). As a result, religious texts began to lose dominance over the written word and thus grew a new body of literature for children. The critical study and evaluation of literature for children has made significant growth since its modest beginnings in the early twentieth century, which we will examine in this course. We will also explore the creation of childhood, children as imagined readers, and how social, political, and cultural factors have influenced topics such as childhood, family, and religion in "classic" and award winning multicultural children's literature. By comparing literature with similar themes over time, we will explore how authors have reflected, challenged, or attempted to remain neutral in their writing about dominant social and cultural values and beliefs, especially those pertaining to race/racism, ethnic and cultural diversity, and equity and social justice. We will discuss literature within the context of historical and political events of when the work was published and consider how literature can be a reflection of a time-period and authors' political ideologies (Stephens, 1992; Sutherland, 1985). Finally, we will consider how literature can foster dialogue in K-8 classrooms to promote anti-racist counter-narratives to develop children's understanding of their role in contributing to a more just, equitable, and humane world.

Students in today's information age are consuming greater amounts of quantitative information on a daily basis than ever before. This information comes in many forms and typically involves large data sets that tell "number stories" such as social media activity, politics, global health concerns, and educational achievement. How those number stories are displayed, numerically, text narrative, or graphically holds both power and peril. In this course, we will consider the evolution of visual displays of quantitative information, analyze the characteristics of visualizations, and explore the ways in which the interaction between data and design influence the communication of a number story. These ideas will be investigated through the lens of societal issues and student learning.

In this course we will engage in an interactive seminar-style discourse that grapples with current concepts, issues, and trends associated with comparative and international education. We will consider education in its relation to economic and integral human development in lower-income country contexts. We will also discuss various issues from comparative education - including school choice, accountability systems, and teacher policy and practice - attempting to learn from exemplary case studies and top performing countries.

Students will read, synthesize, and discuss how cognitive science can help us make decisions when faced with questions about teaching, learning, and instructional design. Cognitive science provides models and rigorous evidence about the mechanisms involved in thinking, learning, and problem solving. Although we do not yet have complete understanding of how basic cognitive research can be applied to education, we are far enough along that we should try to take advantage of what we know to improve teaching and learning. Students in this class will apply cognitive science research to inform their education-related service for elementary or middle school children. They also will carry out a small-n experiment to evaluate if a particular instructional design feature matters for children's learning, and one of the final exam questions will ask students to propose an original experiment for the next class to test. Community placements may include mathematics and/or early reading tutoring conducted two days a week (either M/W or T/TH) in the local South Bend community. Note that some of the local sites we work with may not be within walking distance of campus, so students may need to have a car or regular access to transportation for those sites if chosen.

This course uses a sociological lens to explore the influence of religion and religious communities on education through the study of faith-based schools. Topics covered will include the rationale behind faith-based schools, religious socialization and worldview, faith-based school community, culture, and mission, and associated student outcomes.

Discussions about curriculum and pedagogy in education have, for the most part, been limited and limiting, exploring curriculum as a written plan of study (often handed down by the state or a district) and pedagogy as the mere equivalence of teacher instruction. Using some foundational and contemporary theories in education combined with those with ideas from public pedagogy and cultural studies, the intent of this course is to broaden and complexify our understandings of curriculum and pedagogy; what they are, what they entail, where and by whom they are enacted, and, mostly, what they "do" in education when conceived in more broader terms. Using a variety of texts, both in and outside of education, we will explore how pedagogy and curriculum combine with the "public" to operate, to "educate", in "spaces" like a college campus, a theme park, a museum, a textbook, a classroom, a mall or grocery store, or through popular cultural texts such as film, advertising, social media, and/or newspapers. Going back and forth between discussions of curricular artifacts and pedagogical understandings in education proper and those public "texts" noted above, we will examine how curriculum and pedagogy operate in both formal and informal educational settings, what one may learn from the other, and, in the process, re-imagine what these terms could mean in the context of K-12 education.

In June 2020, prompted by the horrific killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, our nation awakened to the brutality of institutional racism and the violence to human dignity it has wrought in communities of color throughout America's history. The movement for racial justice was renewed in vigor with nationwide protests and calls for action. Although the protests of 2020 have largely been a response to a crisis surrounding police violence, the calls to action have focused attention on the breadth of systemic racism in all facets of American life. In this course, students will engage weekly with a single event or concept, drawn from a variety of disciplines, necessary to understand and dismantle systemic racism. The course centers around a weekly guest-lecture series featuring authors, public intellectuals, faith leaders, and external and internal members of the academy. In each guest-lecture class period, the guest expert provides a sophisticated introduction to a discrete racial justice topic. Some lectures address historical events not widely known (e.g., the Tulsa massacre or the arrival of the first slave ship in the Americas in 1619); others address current racial inequities (e.g., the wealth gap, health outcomes, criminal justice, voter suppression); still others examine broad concepts (e.g., intersectionality, Catholic teaching on racism). Specific topics to be determined by expert availability. This three-credit version of the course is designed for students who are interested in a more intensive study of each week's topic. Students will participate in once-weekly in-person seminar sessions with readings to accompany the speaker and topic for the week. Following each guest lecture, students will gather briefly via zoom to reflect and respond. Throughout the course of the semester, students will compose a variety of short papers, lead classroom discussions, and complete a final project incorporating independent research on related topics.

Book bans are the removal, suppression, or restricted circulation of literary material that are objectionable by standards applied by the censor. In this course we will explore the origins and history of censorship in American schools, with a particular focus on literary works. We will explore the power of literature in students’ academic, social and emotional development and literate lives and consider the ways in which book bans and censorship limit or shape this development. As we engage with and read a selection of banned picture, graphic, YA, and adult books (both historical and contemporary), students will consider key questions such as: What reasons, espoused and implicit, lead to book bannings? How have these motivations been shaped by contemporary fears, hopes, and ideologies? Who are the censors, and what voices are being silenced? How does book banning influence the agency and professionalism of teachers? What are the outcomes–intended or otherwise–on students’ and teachers’ lived experience in schools?

This course takes youth as the central focus for investigations into schooling, society, and policy. Children and youth are often the object of international development programs and national policies that recognize the promise of youth when channeled toward productive ends and the problem of youth when familial, social supports and formal structures break down. Many of these programs and policies argue youth are “idle” and the solution is empowerment through hard work, education, self-improvement, and formal employment. Consequently, youth have received much attention from NGOs, governments, media, and local organizations–all aim to shape youth into their version of ideal, self-empowered adults. As a result, youth are confronted with different versions of who they can and should become, contributing to the already ambiguous nature of what it means to be youth and to become an adult. Throughout the course we will investigate the various ways in which youth are constructed as both the problem and the solution. We will also interrogate the various representations of youth in cross-cultural contexts, and how these representations shape experiences in the context of schooling, the role of youth in society, and in public policy in urban cities in the U.S. and in urban contexts across Africa.

Concepts of human growth vary extraordinarily across time and space. When children become full-fledged persons, when they can reason, when or whether they should be independent from their parents and how all this happens are variable and illuminating. Education -- either formal or informal -- reflects and also constitutes a society's view of childhood. This course provides a (selective) cross-cultural survey of childhood and education, looking at stages from pregnancy and infancy to late adolescence. Students will devise and conduct projects of their own.

This course is related to an internship with the American Indian Catholic School Network.

Interns are introduced to and practice basic educational concepts including but not limited to unit and lesson planning, classroom management, general and content-specific pedagogy, core instructional practice, and trauma-informed care.

This practicum/seminar is the logical outgrowth of a long informal relationship that student volunteers have had with families in the Michiana community who have autistic and other special-needs children. The practicum aspect of the course will involve students going into a family home and working in a structured program with an autistic child for, on average, three times a week and a total of six to seven hours. In addition, students will meet in class once a week for discussion on a range of topics relating to autism, including issues regarding its definition, assessment, etiology, and treatment, as well as topics regarding the impact of autism on the family, community resources, and social policy. A number of classes will feature discussions led by parents of autistic children. This class is recommended particularly for students interested in child clinical psychology, education, developmental psychology, and social work.

Student and Instructor will design readings relevant to a special interest in education.

This course provides students with the opportunity to conduct educational programs with individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) while acquiring an in-depth knowledge of the individual, family, community, and cultural issues surrounding the diagnosis. For the practicum portion of the course, students will work within a structured program in a family home, on-average two times a weeks for at least four hours (50 hours over the course of the semester). For the in-class portion of the course, students will meet with the instructors to discuss current research/readings, important topics, and personal experiences related to ASD. It is our hope that through this course you will begin to gain an understanding of individuals with ASD and acquire the skills to support them and their families. In addition, you will continue to develop the communication skills (written and oral) that are crucial to be a successful professional in the field of developmental disabilities. Please note that a version of this course is offered at the 40000 level which has a significant writing requirement (and has additional required coursework, see listing). Other requirements: Unless other arrangements are made, students need to have a car or regular access to transportation.

Scholars and activists use the concept of the "carceral state" to describe the official, government use of policing, surveillance, and mass imprisonment to exercise control over society. This course examines the histories, cultures, politics, and economics of prisons and policing in the United States, in order to determine how the U.S. carceral state has been a factor in the social construction of race, gender, and citizenship. We will study the genealogy of the U.S. carceral state -- beginning with the surveillance embedded in the earliest practices of slavery and settler colonialism, tracing its development through the 19th and early 20th centuries, and concluding with the rise of the modern prison industrial complex. We will then focus on contemporary U.S. prisons, policing, and surveillance, using case studies including the "war on drugs," immigrant detention, sex-crime regulation, and police violence. Finally, we will consider alternatives to prisons and policing, as we learn about academic research and activist movements working to end state and police violence, abolish prisons, and create opportunities for restorative justice. Over the course of the semester, students will learn about the historical development and ongoing maintenance of the carceral state, using an intersectional framework that highlights the ways in which prisons and policing have both shaped, and been shaped by, race, gender, citizenship, and economics. Along the way, students will ask and address such questions as: How does the U.S. carceral state function as a tool for social control? What histories, policies, and ideologies underlie the carceral state? How have individuals and organizations worked to transform or abolish the carceral state? How have art and cultural production been used to normalize and/or critique the carceral state? And can we imagine a world without prisons or police?

The ability to read and understand written language has had a profound impact on human civilization, shaping how we think, learn, and communicate. In this course, we will discuss the cognitive science of reading and dyslexia. We will focus on the components that are specific to the task of reading itself, rather than on the more general cognitive, linguistic, or social capacities involved. Drawing from multiple perspectives, students will gain an understanding of how people learn to read, the processes involved in skilled reading, and the causes of reading difficulties. We also will consider what cognitive science research says (or doesn't say) about how reading should be taught. The topics covered will be relevant to anyone interested in gaining deeper insights into one of humanity's most important inventions.

This course will provide students with an overview of the current concepts, issues and trends associated with comparative and international education, paying particular attention to issues of education policy. Roughly half the course will focus on education and integral human development and international economic development, concerned with the trends, issues, and opportunities facing lower-income country contexts in terms of education policy and practice. This will cover issues such as funding policy, the role of international actors, global policy priorities, and effective programs and policies. The second half of the course will look more broadly at salient issues from comparative education, drawing from cross national studies and country case studies of notable policies and reforms in education systems globally.

This course will explore how to solve complex development problems in the real world in development contexts. It will focus on case studies from international education and draw upon the work of pioneering organizations, leaders, scholars, and practitioners engaged in improving educational outcomes and opportunities for children, schools, and systems in Africa. The course will engage and integrate the experiences and problems of practice of top education NGOs and policy leaders to understand and explore the problems of innovation, scaling, sustainability, and government take-up and policy impact. It will draw upon systems thinking, various types of applied research, and policy analysis, and engage with the efforts of global and local institutions seeking to drive sustainable change.

This course introduces students to the key concepts and principles of survey design, equipping them with the foundational knowledge and skills needed to start designing and conducting a survey that informs program learning. This course focuses on the practical application of survey methods, specifically focusing on the appropriateness, utility, feasibility, and rigor of the measurement process. Students will gain hands-on experience developing surveys and making decisions on the modes of assessment, sampling, data collection design, and budgeting for survey data collection. While the course will use examples from education and child development research (primarily with children and adolescents from low-resource and crisis contexts) to provide students with applied case studies, the knowledge and skills are broadly applicable across a variety of sectors.

This course introduces students to key concepts and methods of qualitative research, equipping them with the foundational knowledge and skills needed to start designing, conducting, and analyzing qualitative research that informs program learning. The course focuses on the practical application of qualitative methods in applied research and evaluation within programs. Students will gain hands-on experience in developing qualitative instruments, such as interview guides and focus group protocols, as well as coding and conducting thematic analysis using Dedoose. While the course emphasizes qualitative research methods to examine experiences and perspectives related to educational program implementation and evaluation, the tools and techniques covered are broadly applicable across various sectors.

This course is a hands-on opportunity to work with a team on an ongoing project—School Story Lab—about people's experiences of being in school, and to amplify the work via social media. School Story Lab builds on both interviews and crowdsourced stories. The goal of the project is to collect and disseminate personal experiences of people (especially students and teachers) involved in schools at all levels, and internationally. Experience-near accounts of school should always be considered by policy makers and those charged with designing schools, but they are often overlooked in favor of simpler standardized measures. These experiences are affective, bodily, social, economic, medical, and more, not just cognitive. Stories provide it all. The course meets weekly for an hour, and students spend another 1-2 hours weekly working on the project: conducting and analyzing interviews, contributing to the website, and bringing their own experiences.

Given the dramatic rise in mass incarceration over the last 50 years, understanding the spillover consequences of this uniquely American phenomenon has become increasingly important as a growing number of families now have direct experience with imprisonment. This course will provide a broad overview of the ripple effects of mass imprisonment on family life and how it shapes opportunity and structures disadvantage for communities, families, and especially children. This will be done through 1) exposure to mixed-media portrayals of imprisonment's effects on family and community life and 2) the close analysis of empirical research on the spillover and intergenerational consequences of incarceration across a range of outcomes. With the concentration of imprisonment falling among poor, minority families, much of the readings in this course will focus on family life in urban communities of color, however, we will spend a little time exploring broader accounts, including those of rural communities and encourage students to consider impacts for families exposed to incarceration due to white-collar crimes.

per Sociology dept: This course aims to challenge our assumptions about which education as an institution in the United States is predicated and ask some fundamental questions about the relationship between education and society. Why does everyone go to school? Why do some students seem to learn more and “get ahead” than others? What factors shape how schools are run and organized, and what curricular materials are taught? How do schools help to maintain our capitalist system, and how do the factors of race, class, and gender affect the educational experiences of students within schools and classrooms? How can schools become more effective? What interventions have worked to improve schools? These are among the questions we will consider this semester. A primary focus of this course will be on the effects of schools and classrooms on educational outcomes. We will cover topics in the sociology of education related to school effects, sector effects, tracking and ability grouping, and classroom and teacher effects. We will look at the structure, practices, content, and outcomes of schooling, primarily in the light of their relationships to the wider society in which schools are situated. As part of the course, we will also consider the social and organizational context of contemporary education reforms in the United States—particularly test-based accountability for schools, teachers, and students—and place these reforms in a more global perspective.

Major theories in cognitive development and data relevant to those theories are reviewed. Mechanisms that might account for observed developmental changes across the life span (e.g., processing speed) are discussed.

Students will learn about both methods and topics in educational research. Students will design and execute an original research study.

One of the complicating factors in the formation of novice teachers has to do with the "apprenticeship of observation:" the fact that anyone who enters the teaching force has spent, as K-12 students, approximately 14,000 hours across 13 years watching teachers work. This 1-credit seminar, designed for prospective teachers and those interested in the practice of teaching, relies on community engagement, readings, focused observation of lessons from K-12 classrooms, reflection, and conversation with current K-12 teachers and school leaders to make visible the less apparent, and often quite complex, layers of teaching—like student engagement, learning, and classroom culture. By the end of the course, students will have developed a reflective framework that conditions them to know where and how to focus their professional development as they enter into more advanced education-related course and field work.

Children across America spend ~14,000 hours in school from kindergarten through grade 12. How those instructional hours are spent dramatically impacts students’ academic and personal well-being. Many studies have demonstrated that teacher quality matters to students’ learning and long-term outcomes such as graduation and job placement. In this course, we delve into the essential principles of being an effective teacher. Building community, designing curriculum, reaching all students, and assessing students effectively are a handful of the principles we will explore together through articles about teacher practice, video examples of classroom practice, observations in a local classroom, and an opportunity to enact some of these practices in the course. Each student enrolled in the course will be paired with a Catholic school teacher in South Bend to observe throughout the seminar and teach one lesson in their class. By the end of this course, students will learn some core principles of effective teaching, gain an understanding of the complexities of being an effective teacher, engage in a semester-long partnership with an effective teacher, and practice some aspects of teaching in a Catholic school context. This course is highly recommended for incoming ACE Teaching Fellows as an introduction to teaching before their summer formation experience begins.

This course provides students an opportunity for a pedagogical internship with an ESS faculty member.

Designed to mirror the general Arts & Letters summer internship (AL 45999), but with the specificity of educational issues in an education setting, this internship is arranged by special departmental approval and is governed jointly by the internship policies of the College of Arts and Letters and the Education, Schooling, and Society program of the Institute for Educational Initiatives.

Research carried out in conjunction with and/or under the supervision of a faculty member.

Arranged by ESS advisor. Students who have completed at least two credits of ESS 47602 Research Lab through a research apprenticeship may fulfill the capstone requirement by conducting a thesis in ESS.

Sustained, rigorous independent research under direct faculty supervision.