Education 200: Critical Issues in Education

Course Syllabus

Spring 2017 Heather Curl

Mon/Wed 2:15-3:45 ` Classroom: Stokes 207

HC Office: Founders 028 / Wed 4 to 7 pm (by appt.) Email:

BMC Office: Betwys Coed 114/ Tuesday4 to 6 503-320-5883

Course Overview

This is designed to be the first course students take if they are interested in pursuing one of the options offered through the Bryn Mawr/Haverford Education Program. These options include state certification at the secondary level and a bi-college minor in Educational Studies. Courses in the Education Program address students interested in:

  • The theory, process, and reform of education in the U.S
  • Social justice, activism, and working within and against systems of social reproduction
  • Future work as educators in schools, public or mental health, community, or other settings
  • Examining and re-claiming their own learning and educational goals
  • Integrating field-based and academic learning

While ED 200 is designed specifically for students with some interest in pursuing education as a career, and while priority for enrollment goes to students enrolled in the certification program and the minor, Critical Issues in Education is also open to students who are not yet certain about their career aspirations but have a general interest in educational issues. In this course we explore and analyze some of the major issues in education in the United States within the conceptual framework of educational reform.

Learning Goals

Through course texts, class discussions and field placement experiences, we will investigate different philosophical conceptions of education and its varying purposes. Students will learn to consider, discuss, analyze, theorize, recognize, and create education as:

  • An experience-based framework which centers on the natural curiosity / learning inherent in all children
  • A standardizing experience which ensures production of “successful” citizens
  • A deficit oriented purpose which positions children in need of help / saving from the education system
  • A reproducing structure meant to keep social actors in the status to which they were born
  • A liberating force which inspires and prepares those who are dominated to challenge the structures within which they are constrained
  • A way through which an individual might achieve success over their peers and colleagues
  • A way through which a community might collectively achieve success
  • A force for national economic competition and/or patriotism/assimilation
  • A catalyst for new, and new combinations of, knowledge
  • Others we articulate and discover together, as well as the tensions and interplay among these

Expectations

All students considering taking the course need to know that it is demanding in terms of reading, writing, time spent at schools, and class participation. If you choose to take this course, please be aware that you will be expected to demonstrate:

  • Reliable and consistent attendance at and participation in your field placement
  • Active, engaged participation in a collaborative, group-graded project requiring students to work together interdependently.
  • A high degree of independence, responsibility, and intellectual resourcefulness (ability to search out and make connections across theory, practice, sites, ideas, people) in all of your work, both collaborative and individual
  • Willingness to evaluate your own participation in the course's activities in a number of ways
  • Willingness to take an active role as teacher as well as learner.

Course Policies

  • This course will involve students as critical readers and writers of texts, active contributors in class discussions, and contributors in other education-related settings. Your presence and active engagement are essential. If the need arises for you to miss a class, be late or leave early, please email me ahead of time if possible. Missing more than three classes may lower your grade; excellent attendance and participation will enhance your grade.
  • This course is Writing Intensive. Assignments include four reflective/analytical papers; a lesson plan with rationale; and a portfolio. Please try and make every deadline for the course.If there is a reason why you cannot complete a paper by the due date, speak to me about an extension before the date that the paper is due. Please limit your use of this option to one paper.
  • Course papers may be revised and re-submitted for a new grade based on the revision. Please consult with me on the revision process. Revisions are due the last day of classes.
  • In all written assignments, please take care to edit and proofread your work so that needless errors do not distract readers from the strength of your thinking.
  • Bring each day’s readings to class with you so that you can use them in our discussions (this includes articles printed from Moodle and/or notes taken from the readings if you choose not to print out articles.
  • Feel free to bring personal devices to class (particularly to refer to readings, for example), but please limit your use of devices to course-specific activity and do not use social media during class.

Campus Resources

  • Special Needs/Access Services: Students who think they may need accommodations in this course because of the impact of a learning, physical, or psychological disability are encouraged to meet with me privately early in the semester to discuss their concerns. Bryn Mawr students should also contact Deb Alder, Coordinator of Access Services (610-526-7351 or ), as soon as possible, to verify their eligibility for academic accommodations. Haverford students should contact Access Coordinator, Sherrie Borowsky Deegan (610-896-1324 or ). If you have already been approved to receive academic accommodations and would like to request accommodations in this course because of a disability, please meet with me privately at the beginning of the semester.
  • Academic Support and Learning Resources at BMC: Students are encouraged to reach out to the Academic Support and Learning Resources Specialist to explore effective learning, studying, test-taking, note-taking and time and stress management strategies that are essential to success in this course and college life. Students can schedule a meeting with Rachel Heiser, the Academic Support and Learning Resources Specialist by calling the Dean's Office at (610)526-5375. Visit: for more details.
  • Office of Academic Resources (OAR): Located at Haverford in Stokes Suite 118, the OAR offers students many resources, including communal study spaces, peer tutoring, workshop series, and individual coaching with the center’s trained staff. See their website for more information or contact Kelly Wilcox () for more details.
  • BMC Writing Center: The BMC Writing Center offers free appointments and experienced peer tutors who are there to help you at any stage of the writing process. The Writing Center is located in Canaday Library. You can get more information at
  • HC Writing Center: At Haverford, the Writing Center is located in Magill Library, Stokes, and Zubrow Commons. You can get more information about hours and how to make an appointment at
  • Canaday Library and Magill Library: For help with research, multimedia and technology the folks here stand ready to help! Email Olivia Castello () or Brie Gettleson () to ask questions or make a research appointment.

Course Materials

Books available at Bryn Mawr Bookstore:

  • Dewey, J. [1997 (1938)]. Experience and Education. New York: Simon &Schuster.
  • Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
  • Fabricant & Fine (2013). The Changing Politics of Education: Privatization and the Dispossessed Lives Left Behind. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.

All other readings are available on the Moodle site.

COURSE ASSIGNMENTS

1. School Placements and Class Participation

Visit and Observe:You will make 8 visits to a school, in which you will spend approximately two hours per week. Keeping a regular field journal will help you keep track of issues, events, and questions to pursue in course papers and the portfolio. You should observe the neighborhood, the school building, the school culture, the structures (political, social, institutional, etc.) of the school, the classroom culture, the teachers, the students, and what happens in all of these places. But beyond these observations, you need to participate in a constructive way in the classroom in which you are placed. It is up to you and the teachers with whom you are placed to negotiate your participation in the classroom.

One page letter:To facilitate that process of negotiation, you need to compose a one-page introductory letter of yourself to give to your placement teacher. In this letter, which should be typed, error-free and in letter format, you should introduce yourself, say something about your interest in teaching, and express something about how you think you might be able to participate constructively in this teacher’s classroom (make suggestions and requests, not assumptions or assertions, about what you will be able to do). The purposes of the letter are for you to think through these things for yourself and to share them with the teacher. Remember that you are a guest in this teacher’s classroom, and must therefore be respectful of the values and practices he or she embraces, but you may also make known your own enthusiasm about teaching and your willingness to assist the teacher in whatever ways you can. This letter should be prepared (i.e., ready to be given to the teacher) by week 4 (or earlier/later depending on when you receive your placement).

Field Notes: During or after each visit, write field notes using one of the two forms on Moodle, or a different format if that works better for you. Drawing on your observation notes, and soon after each visit to your field placement, take the time to write a short (one paragraph or list) reflection, revisiting your observation notes and taking the time to articulate, in some way, what you learned from the time you spent in the classroom during that specific observation. These will become incredibly useful as you work on your reflection papers and portfolio. Please turn in these observation notes and short reflections at the end of the course with your portfolio. You might use the following questions to help you in writing these observation notes/reflections if you are stuck (but are not required to):

  • Describe an interaction (teacher-student or student-student) you observed today. Think about what conditions helped support this interaction.
  • What was a key topic or issue addressed in class today?
  • What was something that students learned from today? (You may choose to focus on one or several students here.)
  • What one student stood out to you today? Why?

Placement Experience in Class and Edtalks:Draw on your experiences in your placement to contribute to class discussion each week and to explore the connections between the theory we discuss and what is happening in actual classrooms. You should incorporate direct quotations, vignettes, and references to your experiences into as many forums as possible (short papers, class discussions, etc.). You will also be required to attend at least two “Edtalks” – hour long meetings led by an advanced education student – throughout the semester during which you can discuss what you’re observing in your placement and bring up any questions or concerns. You can attend as many Edtalks as you would like to, but are required to go to at least two. At the end of the placement, we ask your cooperating teacher to write an evaluation of your participation. Your cooperating teacher’s evaluation will contribute to your final grade for the course, and it will have an impact on your candidacy for student teaching, should you choose to pursue that option through the Education Program.

Thank You Note: At the end of your 8 weeks in the school, you should write a thank you note to the teacher(s) with whom you have been working. These teachers allow you into their classrooms for no other reason than to support your education; they receive no remuneration. Teachers generally do not get the recognition that they deserve for the challenging job they embrace, and therefore all teachers appreciate any thanks and feedback they can get. In your thank-you note, be sure to identify at least one (if not more) thing that you really appreciated and learned from being in that particular classroom.

It is ESSENTIAL that you complete all of your placements: many teachers, administrators, and students expect you to be present, and if you miss days or show up late, the relationships we have with these teachers and schools are jeopardized. (One school no longer lets us place students because a student didn’t show up for his placement.) This portion of the course (along with in class participation) accounts for 15% of your overall grade, based on observation notes turned in at the close of the semester (with the final portfolio), comments from placement teacher, attendance at Ed Talks and participation in weekly classes.

****Important Note: All course writings referring to your field placement must use pseudonyms.

2. Reflective Writing in Response Groups

At the beginning of the semester, we will form response groups, which will then provide an ongoing audience and forum for the exchange of ideas. Four short (1,000-1,200 word) reflective/analytical papersare required for this component of the course. You will be writing for your own reflective, analytical purposes and for an audience of your peers (classmates) as well as your instructor.

  • Paper 1 – Educational Autobiography:In the first paper you will draw on your own educational experiences as data for beginning to investigate educational issues and assumptions. Write a Table of Contents that outlines the chapters of your (imagined) educational autobiography. Then select the chapter that most interests you to draft; this should include your narration of an experience in your educational history (from a single interaction to a day or an overview of a longer time period) as well as some interpretive framing of the piece. The intention of this paper is to develop the skill of analysis based on personal experience.
  • Paper 2 – Theory Paper:The second paper will be more analytical in nature, and asks you to interpret one of the three major theoretical perspectives we read during the first six weeks of class, reflecting on the significance of the text or theory and/ or the ways in which you see the theory enacted in the lived experiences of students (yourself included). The intention of this paper is to develop the skill of analysis based on theory.
  • Paper 3 – Assumption Analysis: During the first section of the course we identify and interrogate a range of assumptions about education — both others’ and our own. In the second and third sections of the course, we will witness the ways in which some of these assumptions play out in reform efforts and perspectives of education’s role within society. For this thirdpaper you will select an assumption that you see as significant to the way schooling has been constructed. You might focus on a reigning assumption in education writ large, and/or on an assumption of your own about education. For this paper, you will:
  1. Identify and describe the assumption you are examining, including how it may have affected such matters as schooling structures, curriculum and pedagogy, and views of students and/or teachers.
  2. Make the assumption problematic, that is, explore questions, refutations, contradictions, and so forth that would help us to interrogate or complicate this assumption and its staying power.
  3. Suggest other perspectives or possible ways of seeing the situation.
  • Paper 4 – Placement Paper:The fourth paper should explore what you are learning / have learned in your field placement and how what you are witnessing in your placement is informing your emerging conception of the “purpose of education.”Attempt to articulate what you see as the purpose of education dominant in your setting. Howclose or far it that from your own values/beliefs? The intention of this paper is to develop the skill of analysis based on observations / qualitative research and to document the learning you are accomplishing via your placement.

Please send a copy of your reflection paper to each member in your group (and cc Heather) on the due dates as indicated in the syllabus (always a Monday night) and read your group’s papers in preparation for the following class (Wed). Take notes to help tailor your comments. Be sure to identify at least one area for improvement and one area of strength for each paper you receive from your group members. You will meet in groups during the Wednesday class session and offer this feedback for each other in class. A final version of the paper will then be due to the instructor at midnight on Friday of that week – providing a chance to learn, practice and make use of revision in writing. Please take your role as reader seriously. The instructor will assign an overall grade for this portion of the class based on your own reflection of your growth and effort through these papers, documented in a self-grading activity in class, as well as the instructor’s grades / comments. This represents 40% of your final grade.