EDUCATION FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

EDPOL 355

Public education in the United States is an inherently political site that offers an important institution to understand politics, power, and injustice broadly. Explore these themes from multiple angles: (a) the layered histories of injustice at the intersection of race, class, gender, and more in historical and present cases; (b) the power of ideas in shaping policy possibilities; (c) shifting levels of governance and questions of injustice; and (c) perspectives of key actors, interests, and stakeholders. Consider the politics of education in relation to broader social, spatial, historical, and political economic contexts. Develop critical analytic and conceptual tools to deeply understand and analyze how power and politics are impacting contemporary educational policy events. By drawing from grassroots and subjugated perspectives, cultivate a policy imagination towards more just educational possibilities, and explore the necessary policy infrastructure and movements to sustain them.

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.

CURRIC 240

Investigates aspects of social justice and equity as they relate to teaching, schooling, and education.

EDPOL 870

Analysis of several social theories emphasizing the explanation of social change, the role of education in the change process, and the implications for educational policy in contemporary society.

EDPOL/INTLST 220

Explores questions related to human rights and education, from the individual to the global level; from the abstract to the practical: What does it mean to be human? How do we learn to be human? What rights mark a human being? Do all human have rights? If they have a right to education, do they have a right to a particular kind of education? Can one global education and human rights model best meet the needs of our incredibly diverse global population? Can the global human rights framework improve current educational, national, social, and economic inequities? How so? How does education as a human right relate to human rights education? and who should decide the answers to these questions, and how? Investigates the tensions and boundaries of the human rights framework to reduce social inequality through methodological inquires in educational case studies, including: educational inequality; victims of the war on drugs; working children's rights; and climate change.