YOUTH, EDUCATION, AND SOCIETY

EDPOL/SOC 648

Utilizes a sociological lens to examine American schools and schooling, with a particular focus on social inequality in the U.S. and how class, race, and gender intersect in the experiences of students. Examine how schools and schooling relate to broader social structures, institutions, and practices with a focus on inequality in public education.

EDPOL 200

Explores the complex relationships among race, ethnicity and inequality in U.S. public education through theoretical, historical, social, and cultural frameworks and perspectives. Specifically, examine how schools serve are sites where racial/ethnic inequality is produced, reproduced, and resisted through institutional structures and the "everyday" practices of teachers, students, parents, and community members. Examine how race and ethnicity intersect with other identities (e.g. gender, social class, sexual orientation, etc.). It is centrally focused on K-12 education and working in multicultural contexts.

EDPOL 300

Focuses on the interplay between schools and society by examining societal and cultural influences on school processes, policies, practices, and pedagogy; or, how society shapes schooling, and conversely, the ways in which schools assist in shaping society. Reflect on the purposes of schools and how these purposes have shifted over time. Examines how assumptions regarding the purposes of schooling interact with debates over how we teach, what we teach, and how we evaluate schools, teachers, and students. Identify the foundations of education in the United States and critically examine the ways in which educational practices and policies impact the lives of students.

EDPOL/GEN&WS 160

Explores how gender, sexuality, and gender identity are conceptualized, practiced, protected, and policed in K-12 schools and in out-of-school contexts in the United States and globally. Examines how gender, sexuality, and gender identity intersect with race, class, language, nationality, and religion to shape the experiences of school-age children and youth.

EDPOL 810

Engage with and discuss the historical, ideological, and contemporary issues surrounding community-based spaces and programs serving youth. Topics will include: grassroots organizing and activism, pedagogies of the home, academic outcomes and access to higher education, full-service community-schools/school-community partnerships, social identity, funding and philanthropy, neoliberalism and education privatization, and after school and out-of-school time education. Examine the social and political context of community-based educational efforts in order to understand how they can be nurturing spaces of resistance for youth, as well as spaces of conflict and social reproduction.