Empowering Learners

Alice Lesnick, course instructor, and Susanna Farahat (BMC '05) during a class meeting of Education 225: Empowering Learners (Spring 2005)

 

2007-08 Courses

Writing Program/EDUC H138A: Critical Issues in Education: Politics and Practices (Spring 2008)

This writing seminar is part of Haverford College's Writing Program for first year students. It also serves as the entry course for students planning to pursue one of the options offered through the Bryn Mawr/Haverford Education Program: state certification at the secondary level or a minor in Educational Studies.

The primary goal of this course is to contribute to the growth of each student as an academic writer. By "academic, the course includes personal knowledge, experience, and reflection as connected to close reading, analysis, and argumentation. To this end, students in the course undertake a range of writing projects, with attention throughout to the role of informal writing and revision in extending learning.

This seminar explores major educational issues in the United States in relation to the ongoing need for educational reform. Students analyze historical and philosophical conceptions of education, theories of learning and development, linkages between social identities and schooling, and relationships among knowledge, language, and power. (Hall) Syllabus

EDUC B200, H200: Critical Issues in Education (Fall 2008)
Designed to be the first course for students interested in pursuing one of the options offered through the Education Program, this course is also open to students who are not yet certain about their career aspirations but are interested in educational issues. The course examines major issues in education in the United States within the conceptual framework of educational reform. The first phase of the course invites students to recognize and question prevailing assumptions, their own and those of the broader society, about authority, the political nature of knowledge, and the purposes of schooling that shape education in America. The second phase analyzes components of the teaching and learning process. The third phase seeks to engage students in imagining and enacting, through the completion of collaborative teaching projects, possibilities for reform and reinvention.

Weekly visits to a field placement in a classroom afford students opportunities to reencounter their own educational history by contrasting it with a new setting deliberately observed; to read educational theory and research through the lens of grounded observations and relationships; to develop greater awareness of the complexity and diversity of education in the United States, particularly as concerns questions of equity and social justice; and to raise questions about their own past and present educational experiences, about current practice, and about possible reforms. Students often gain teaching and mentoring experiences in their field of future endeavor. (Hall, Pincus) Syllabus

EDUC H210: Special Education (Fall 2008)

Special Education 210 is designed as a survey course. The goal is to introduce the students to a range of topics, challenges, dilemmas and strategies in understanding and educating all learners, those considered typical learners, and those considered 'special' learners. The field of 'Special Education 'is vast; therefore, as the course progresses, students will be encouraged to narrow their research and area of interest on a student or group of students who share similar challenges as learners. By the end of the course, students should understand more about:

(Flaks) Syllabus

ENGL B220/EDUC B219: Writing in Theory/Writing in Practice (Spring 2008)
This course is designed for students interested in tutoring college or high-school writers or teaching writing at the secondary-school level. Readings in current composition studies will pair texts that reflect writing theory with those that address practical strategies for working with academic writers. To put pedagogic theory into practice, the course will offer a praxis dimension. Students spend a few hours a week working in local public school classrooms or writing centers. In-class collaborative work on writing assignments will allow students to develop writing skills and share their insights into the writing process with others.

(Hemmeter, cross-listed as ENGL B220)

EDUC B220: Changing Pedagogies in Math and Science Education (Spring 2008)
This praxis course examines the new pedagogies being used in math and science education, the research into how people learn on which these pedagogies are based, and the issues that arise in successfully implementing these new approaches. Students have a placement (4-6 hours/week) with a local teacher who is undertaking some aspect of pedagogical change in math or science education. Students should arrange their schedules so as to have two 4-hour blocks of time available for their placements bearing in mind that local secondary schools run from 7:30 am to 2:30 pm. The course is aimed at math and science majors, as well as students in education, and requires no previous experience in education courses. (Donnay)

EDUC B225: Empowering Learners: Theory and Practice of Extra-Classroom Teaching (Spring 2009)
This seminar explores how tutoring, mentoring, and others types of learning support engage and transform issues of authority, role, expertise, and the nature of knowledge. Praxis field placements include campus roles as T.A., peer mentor, PLI leader; off-campus programs; and two new staff-student educational programs at Bryn Mawr. Enrollment limited to 20 students. Priority to students pursuing certification or the minor in Educational studies. This is a Praxis I course. (Lesnick) Syllabus

EDUC B250: Literacies and Education (Fall 2008)
One of the electives offered through the Education Program, this Praxis I course is premised on the view that literacy -- constructing and negotiating meaning through multiple, diverse symbol systems -- is both a central educational mode and goal. Designed for students interested in exploring literacy and education in the multiple senses of both terms, the course examines literacy as social and cultural practice, seeking to trace its key role in formal and informal learning contexts. It also explores the role of literacy in important life passages. Throughout the course we pay particular attention to the meanings of academic literacy, its potential and its limitations. A field placement helps students explore dimensions of literacy education when it is expansively defined. (Cohen) Syllabus

ART/EDUC B251: Arts Teaching in Educational and Community Settings (Spring 2008)
This is a Praxis II course intended for students who have substantial experience in an art form and are interested in extending that experience into teaching and learning at educational and community sites. Following an overview of the history of the arts in education, the course investigates the theories that underlie arts education. The praxis component allows students to create a fluid relationship between theory and practice through observing, teaching, and reflecting on arts practices in education contexts. School or community placement 4-6 hours a week. Enrollment limited to 15. Prerequisite: an intermediate level of experience in an art form. This course counts toward the minor in Dance or Theater. (Cantor, cross-listed as ARTA B251)

EDUC H260: Multicultural Education (Spring 2008)
An investigation of the notion of multicultural education. This Praxis I course problematizes the history, meanings, purposes and outcomes of multicultural education and engages students in researching and reinventing what is possible in education for, with and about a diverse world. (Hall) Syllabus

EDUC B266: Schools in American Cities (Spring 2008)
An elective offered through the Education Program that also meets a requirement for Cities and Sociology majors, this course is designed for students to investigate the issues, challenges and possibilities of urban schooling. Thus, we seek to integrate theoretical frameworks with practice-based experiences toward an understanding of critical issues in urban education. The course begins with perspectives of students and teachers in urban schools, then turns to sociological, political/economic, and legal perspectives on the contemporary crisis in United States cities; in this context, we investigate issues of curriculum and pedagogy. Finally, we focus on urban school reform efforts.

Since we are located right outside Philadelphia, the course utilizes Philadelphia as an illustrative "case"; we pay particular attention to current events in the city's reform effort. Field placements in urban school settings and conversations with urban educators and students offer us opportunities to explore the relationship of macro-conditions to particular people, places, and programs. Students also learn and practice fundamental qualitative research strategies as a way to integrate their fieldwork with other learning in the course. This is a Praxis I course. (Cross-listed as CITY B266 and SOCL B266). (Cohen) Syllabus

EDUC B301: Curriculum and Pedagogy Seminar (Fall 2008)
This is the penultimate course required of certification candidates. The only "methods" course they take prior to student teaching, the class challenges them to clarify and to complicate the assumptions, beliefs, hopes, fears, and goals they bring to their preparation to teach. Here, pre-service teachers think through and plan their approaches to: attending to the diversity of students; creating an appropriate teaching persona in relation to students, other teachers, administrators, and parents; conceptualizing curricula; co-creating with students a classroom environment conducive to active and engaged learning; designing meaningful, relevant lesson plans and congruent forms of assessment and evaluation; and integrating technology into their teaching.

These theoretical explorations are grounded by interaction with experienced teachers and high school students, who participate within the context of the college class, and weekly visits to the classroom in which certification candidates will be completing student teaching in the spring. Assignments include: a weekly exchange of letters with high school students and a final analysis of the dialogue; a journal; school placement and weekly reflections on this placement; development of a technology project; and completion of the first draft of the final portfolio. (Cook-Sather) Syllabus

EDUC B302: Practice Teaching Seminar (Spring 2008)
Open only to candidates seeking certification, these two courses, which earn students three credits, complement and inform one another. Practice Teaching entails spending every day all day in a middle or high school and assuming responsibility for teaching two or three classes for a full 12 weeks in the spring of the senior year. The seminar serves as a forum for processing the student teaching experience and continuing to strive to integrate theory and practice. The assignments revisit or build on those in Curriculum and Pedagogy, connect directly to the practice teaching experience, and prepare certification candidates for a teaching career. Assignments include weekly lesson planning and other classroom-related work, an inquiry project, and completion of the final version of the portfolio. (Cook-Sather) Syllabus

EDUC B303: Practice Teaching in Secondary Schools (Spring 2008)
Supervised teaching in secondary schools (12 weeks). Two units of credit are given for this course. Open only to students preparing for state certification.

EDUC H310: Defining Educational Practice (Fall 2007)
This course is the first of two in a yearlong senior seminar required of students who intend to graduate with a minor in Educational Studies. It is typically taken during the senior year (and is open, though ED 311 is not, to students not completing the minor). ED 310 in the fall and ED 311 in the spring form a cohesive course of study intended to both synthesize and extend students' knowledge and experiences in the minor. At the center of both courses is students' active participation in and reflective learning from their field placement. Our course of study is divided into four main parts – activism and education, curriculum and pedagogy, teacher inquiry, and co-construction of the 311 syllabus – with a consideration of how to meet the needs and goals of diverse learners in diverse settings threaded throughout. Each part includes a writing assignment and the culminating portfolio gives students a chance to reflect on connections among them and with their own growth.

Like the minor in Educational Studies as a whole, this course addresses students with a broad range of interests and goals. It draws on and pursues educational philosophy, research, and activities but not only in terms of their own reproduction within pre-established systems of knowledge or schooling. It is premised on the belief that teaching and learning are essential human activities, traditions, and potentialities across time and space. We hope that in the focal topics and activities of the course students find resources for imagination and action, whether they are seeking to prepare for future work as a traditional teacher or study and practice education in other ways.

Students initiate a field placement through which to ground and extend their learning, typically spending 3-5 hours per week in their placements. The course culminates in work towards the final portfolio. (Lesnick) Syllabus

EDUC H311: Field Work Seminar (Spring 2008)
This course is limited to students completing the minor in Educational Studies. It is designed to complement the field placement experience (5-8 hours per week in a classroom or other education-related setting). The purpose of this seminar is to create a community of reflective practitioners in which, through discussion, reading, writing, and student presentations of problems of practice, students may explore different ways of understanding what each one experiences at his/her site. Topics studied in the course include issues in qualitative research methodology; strategies for negotiating institutions and relationships with students and colleagues; and relationships between culture and communication in education. Completing the final portfolio as well as an extended qualitative inquiry project mark the ending of the course.

Students' individual field placements constitute the central texts of this course. The chief purpose of the field placement is to provide students with the opportunity to act as active and engaged participants, planners, reflectors, and decision-makers within educational work settings. Weekly seminar meetings aim to make productive use of the diversity and convergence of the students' placement experiences, so that they may learn to build local knowledge of their own and others' settings and to understand cross-cutting issues, and options for addressing them. (Lesnick) Syllabus