ED POL Course Offerings
ED POL Summer 2023 Courses
| Course | Title | E.S. Focus | Dates | Times | Instructor | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 112 | Global Education Through Film | Global | AFF (5/30/23-7/9/23) | Asynchronous and Online | Marino | Introduces global educational issues, policies, and practices through films. Considers education in context, thinking critically about the role of education in the world and how education compares across issues, places, policies, and practices. |
| 140 | Introduction to Education | Both | DHH (6/19/23 - 8/13/23) | Asynchronous and Online | Cornfield | Considers core educational dilemmas in historical and global perspective. What’s the purpose of schools? Is schooling a public good or a private good? Do schools ameliorate or entrench inequality? Who should determine what is taught in schools and how? How do we know if schools are “working”? |
| 150-1 | Gender, Sexuality, and Education | Both | ADD (5/30/23 - 6/25/23) | Asynchronous and Online | Evans | This course examines the relationships between gender, sexuality, and education. Through a critical feminist lens, this course will critically examine the ways in which education and schooling are inextricably linked to broader political, social and economic contexts and structuring relations of power, including race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, religion, nation, and geography. |
| 150-3 | Education, Technology, and Society | Both | DHH (6/19/23 - 8/13/23) | MW 1-4pm, Online | Hernandez, G | Technology today reflects and reproduces society’s dynamics of power and inequality more than ever before. A vast number of people now consume news and entertainment via content platforms that use algorithms which influence their media consumption. How does education fit into the mold? Technology’s relationship with schooling has been revolutionized because of the pandemic, and now students must learn in an age where they have large quantities of information and misinformation at their fingertips. In this course, you will learn about the relationship between technology, schooling and society, and the dilemmas, controversies, and consequences that come with it. |
| 150-4 | Internship in Education | N/A | DHH (6/19/23 - 8/13/23) | Asynchronous and Online | Lesure | This course is only one credit. Students will earn academic credit for their Summer 2023 Internship. Internships will help students build their professional network, explore career pathways, boost themselves in future career endeavors. Already have a Summer 2023 Internship or need help finding one? Well then go to go.wisc.edu/56b787 for assistance and to enroll in this exciting new course! |
| 150-5 | Becoming a Teacher: Paths and Policies | U.S. | AFF (5/30/23-7/9/23) | Friday 2-4pm, Online | Timberlake | How are U.S. teachers recruited and trained? How can the next generation of teachers prepare for 21st-century schools? What should we do about the ongoing teacher shortage crisis? You’ll be introduced to these controversial debates and more as we analyze university teacher education programs, teacher policies, and the alternative pathways to teaching. |
| 209 | Introduction to Quantitative Methods in Educational Policy | Both | DHH (6/19/23 - 8/13/23) | Asynchronous and Online | Glave | This course can count as Quantitative B. Sound education policy benefits from the use of reliable evidence, including good data and thorough analyses of both challenges and solutions. This course develops students’ understandings of existing data sets and their limitations, as well as how to perform different statistical analyses on those data sets in order to address specific policy questions. |
| 210 | Youth, Education and Society | U.S. | DHH (6/19/23 - 8/13/23) | Asynchronous and Online | Hernandez, A | This course can count as Ethnic Studies. Interrogates the concept of "youth" as a socially constructed category and examines how "youth" are positioned within educational, political, economic, and social contexts, with a particular focus on racially minoritized youth and those experiencing compounding layers of oppression. Explores themes such as: schooling; race; gender and sexuality; politics and activism; community-based learning; criminal justice; media; and popular culture. Draws on a variety of historical and contemporary "texts" and current events to study the lived experiences of young people situated within diverse racial, cultural, gendered, sexualized, and classed contexts. Students reflect on their own experiences as "youth," their relationship to education and other social institutions, and how it informs their understanding of society, educational theory and practice. |
| 212 | Education for Social Justice | Both | DHH (6/19/23 - 8/13/23) | Asynchronous and Online | Mayer-Jochimsen | What is education for social justice? In what circumstances has schooling been used for social change, and how? This course explores theories and practices of education for social justice, a pedagogical-political approach based on participatory methodologies that is committed to positive social change. This includes popular education, peace and human rights education, critical pedagogy, and related approaches. We will consider theoretical debates, focusing on the ideas of transformative educators such as Paulo Freire and bell hooks, even as we examine radical educator collectives and transformative education efforts in districts, schools, classrooms, community associations, and NGOs from around the world. |
| 220 | Human Rights and Education | Both | ADD (5/30/23 - 6/25/23) | Asynchonous and Online | Shepherd | This course can count as Humanities. Explores questions related to human rights and education, from the individual to the global level and from the abstract to the practical: How do we learn to be human? What are human rights, and in what sense are they universal? What is the right to education, and what does it entail? What is human rights education? Focuses on educational case studies, including child rights, the war on drugs, and climate change. |
| 240 | Comparative Education | N/A | AHH (5/30/23-7/23/23) | Asynchronous and Online | Magana | Examines the socio-cultural, political and economic forces that shape education around the world, including in the US. Explores a series of questions, including the purposes of schooling in different locations; the role of schooling in producing inequality or supporting social change, particularly in relation to class, race, gender, migration, language, and abilities; global educational reform; global educational assessments; student movements; and remote learning. |
| 300 | School and Society | N/A | AHH (5/30/23-7/23/23) | Asynchronous and Online | Downing | Asks how society shapes schooling, and conversely, the ways in which schools shape society. Examines political, social and cultural influences on school processes, policies, practices, and pedagogy. 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. Considers various contemporary debates about public schooling. Critically examines how educational practices and policies impact the lives of students. |
| 305 | Democracy and Education | U.S. | BHH (6/5/23-7/30/23) | Asynchronous and Online | Beneke | This course can count as Communication B. Examines the values embedded in notions of “democracy” and their relationship with education, the role of education in a democracy, how the context of America’s capitalist democracy shapes debates about the role of education in democratic life, and the possibilities for deepening the relationship between democracy and education. |
| 412 | History of American Education | N/A | BHH (6/5/23-7/30/23) | Asynchronous and Online | Pasqualone | Examines the history of education in America from the colonization of North America to the present to consider education in its broadest sense - as a process of individual development and cultural transmission. Explores such topics as the rise of common schools in the urban North; the education of Native Americans, immigrants, slaves, and free blacks; the evolution of teacher training (primarily for women); various philosophies of "progressive" school reform; the politics of desegregation, bilingual education, and special education; the articulation between high school and college work; and the evolving federal role in American education. |
| Course | Title | E.S. Focus | Dates | Instructor |
++ means Discussion Section
MWR means Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
TR means Tuesday and Thursday
ED POL Fall 2023 Courses
| Course | Title | Time & Day | Instructor | E.S. Focus | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 107 | History of the University in the West | 4-5:15 TR | Farrelly | Both | Examines the development of higher education in Europe and the United States from the Middle Ages to the present. Asks how philosophy, pedagogy, people, politics, and places have shaped the intellectual and cultural history of the university. |
| 140 | Introduction to Education | 1: 8-9:15 TR 2: 5:30-6:45 MW | 1: Cornfield 2: Young | Both | Considers core educational dilemmas in historical and global perspective. What’s the purpose of schools? Is schooling a public good or a private good? Do schools ameliorate or entrench inequality? Who should determine what is taught in schools and how? How do we know if schools are “working”? |
| 143 | History of Race and Inequality in U.S. Education | 12:05-12:55 MWF | Berman | U.S. | This course can count as Humanities, Ethnic Studies, and/or Communication B. The 2020 racial uprisings powerfully challenged the racial and class disparities that plague the modern American metropolis. This class explores the history of those disparities and resistance to them with an emphasis on education, youth, housing, and criminal justice. Students will examine the relationships between metropolitan change, economic transformation, and the construction of race and how those processes have shaped mass incarceration, residential and school segregation, and the experiences of racial/ethnic minorities who have been marginalized or discriminated against. Key questions include: What is “race,” how has its meaning changed over time, and how has it historically shaped inequality and opportunity? What is the historical nature of inequality and opportunity in metropolitan America? What policies and ideas have promoted inequality, and how have those policies and ideas shifted over time? Lastly, how have marginalized people responded to inequality, and what have been the impacts of various modes of resistance? |
| 150-1 | Internship in Education | Online-Asynchronous | Lesure | N/A | This course is only one credit. Students will earn academic credit for your Spring 2023 Internship. Internships will help students build their professional network, explore career pathways, boost themselves in future career endeavors. Already have a Spring 2023 Internship or need help finding one? Well then go to go.wisc.edu/56b787 for assistance and to enroll in this exciting new course! |
| 150-2 | Fake News and Media Bias in Education Stories | 4-5:15 MW | Marino | U.S. | How do we better understand stories about schools and schooling that we think we already know? In EDPOL150: Education Policy and Practice: Fake News and Media Bias in Education Stories, students learn to examine claims in education stories and identify personal, structural, and ideological biases. We address questions like “What is knowledge and how is it made and verified in news and media stories— and by whom? What does it mean to construct knowledge, meaning, and reality? What is the difference between fact and opinion? We examine topics like: privatization and charter schools, testing and the opportunity gap, and higher education cost and experience. Finally, we explore fake news and bias in all media platforms and its effects on public attitudes and actions. Participants will develop the skills and strategies to break through the barriers of disinformation and evaluate evidence used to advance different agendas in education policy. |
| 150-3 | FIG: Film and the Holocaust | 4-5:15 MW | Schweber | Global | Examines a variety of topics related to educational policies, practices, and issues in social, cultural, historical, and political economic contexts in the U.S. and around the world. |
| 197 | Listening to the Land (FIG) | 2:25-5:25 T | Cornelius | Both | What if our best teacher is all around us, even under our feet? For Indigenous peoples, whose worldviews, languages, and lifeways emerge from, and sustain, reciprocal relations to place, land is always teaching. Reflect on "land as first teacher" by considering Indigenous approaches to learning, Indigenous languages in relation to land, and the current environmental health of land. Seeks to live the principles of Indigenous learning through Indigenous foodways and experiential, place-based learning activities. Together, develop a personal relationship to Teejop (Four Lakes, or the Madison region), and explore generational responsibilities to Teejop. What does the land teach? And how do people learn to listen? |
| 200 | Race, Ethnicity, and Inequality in American Education | 1-2:15 TR | Timberlake | U.S. | Explores the complex relationships among race, ethnicity and inequality in U.S. public education. Examines how inequality is produced, reproduced, and resisted through schools and the "everyday" practices of teachers, students, parents, and community members. Asks how race and ethnicity intersect with other identities (e.g. gender, social class, sexual orientation, etc.). Focuses on K-12 educational and multicultural contexts. |
| 202 | Careers in Education | 8-9:15 MW | Hora | Both | This course can count as Communication B.Explores the meaning, value, and potential of an education studies major for a variety of education-related careers in the contemporary workplace. Reviews the relationships among education, work, skills and society and analyses of contextual forces shaping education and the labor market (the Covid-19 pandemic, inequality and racism, and climate change). |
| 209 | Introduction to Quantitative Methods for Education | 1-2:15 TR | Claessens | Both | This course can count as Quantitative B. Sound education policy benefits from the use of reliable evidence, including good data and thorough analyses of both challenges and solutions. This course develops students’ understandings of existing data sets and their limitations, as well as how to perform different statistical analyses on those data sets in order to address specific policy questions. |
| 210 | Youth, Education and Society | 1: 9:55-10:45 TR++ 3: 1-2:10 TR ++ | Hernandez | U.S. | This course can count as Ethnic Studies. Interrogates the concept of "youth" as a socially constructed category and examines how "youth" are positioned within educational, political, economic, and social contexts, with a particular focus on racially minoritized youth and those experiencing compounding layers of oppression. Explores themes such as: schooling; race; gender and sexuality; politics and activism; community-based learning; criminal justice; media; and popular culture. Draws on a variety of historical and contemporary "texts" and current events to study the lived experiences of young people situated within diverse racial, cultural, gendered, sexualized, and classed contexts. Students reflect on their own experiences as "youth," their relationship to education and other social institutions, and how it informs their understanding of society, educational theory and practice. |
| 212 | Education for Social Justice | 1: 8:00-9:15 TR 2: 2:30-3:45 TR | 1: Miller 2: Hernandez | Both | What is education for social justice? In what circumstances has schooling been used for social change, and how? This course explores theories and practices of education for social justice, a pedagogical-political approach based on participatory methodologies that is committed to positive social change. This includes popular education, peace and human rights education, critical pedagogy, and related approaches. We will consider theoretical debates, focusing on the ideas of transformative educators such as Paulo Freire and bell hooks, even as we examine radical educator collectives and transformative education efforts in districts, schools, classrooms, community associations, and NGOs from around the world. |
| 220 | Human Rights and Education | 1: 2:30-3:45 MW 2: 5:30-6:45 TR | 1: Rodriguez-Gomez 2: Shepherd | Both | This course can count as Humanities. Explores questions related to human rights and education, from the individual to the global level and from the abstract to the practical: How do we learn to be human? What are human rights, and in what sense are they universal? What is the right to education, and what does it entail? What is human rights education? Focuses on educational case studies, including child rights, the war on drugs, and climate change. |
| 237 | Wealth, Poverty, and Inequality | 4-5:15 TR | Both | How are wealth, poverty, and inequality defined and understood? How are they informed by histories of colonization, genocide, white supremacy, slavery, and dispossession? How do power relations of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, citizenship, nation, religion, language, and geography influence them? What are the historical and current theoretical and practical debates on poverty and ending poverty in the U.S. and globally? How do wealth, poverty, and inequality influence education, and how does education influence wealth, poverty, and inequality? What is the history of educational interventions purportedly charged with ameliorating poverty? What is our own relationship to poverty, wealth, and inequality? Ed Pol 237 will address these questions from a theoretical, historical, and practical perspective by providing an introduction to historical and contemporary debates on wealth, poverty and inequality. In doing so, the course will interrogate these debates in relation to the polities, practices, and institutions of education, and examine their articulations with relations of power like white supremacy, anti-blackness, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and classism. | |
| 240 | Comparative Education | 12:05-12:55 MWF | Otting | N/A | Examines the socio-cultural, political and economic forces that shape education around the world, including in the US. Explores a series of questions, including the purposes of schooling in different locations; the role of schooling in producing inequality or supporting social change, particularly in relation to class, race, gender, migration, language, and abilities; global educational reform; global educational assessments; student movements; and remote learning. |
| 260 | Intro to International Education Development | 4-5:15 MW | Otting | Global | This course reviews theories regarding the relationship between education and development, discusses institutions in international educational development, and considers key issues and approaches to international development. |
| 300 | School and Society | 1: 11-11:50 MW++ 2: 1:20-2:10 TR++ | Otting | N/A | Asks how society shapes schooling, and conversely, the ways in which schools shape society. Examines political, social and cultural influences on school processes, policies, practices, and pedagogy. 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. Considers various contemporary debates about public schooling. Critically examines how educational practices and policies impact the lives of students. |
| 320 | Climate Change, Sustainability & Education | 1:20-2:10 MW++ | Kendall | Both | This course can count as Natural Science. Provides an overview of theories and models of human-earth relations, and the causes and consequences of climate and environmental change. Develops a critical, global approach to examining the role of education, in school and out, in addressing crucial climate and environmental challenges. Includes a wide range of educational theories, projects, programs, levels, institutions, strategies, and policies. Asks how concepts of human-earth relations influence climate change and explores approaches that promise for a more sustaining global future. |
| 335 | Globalization and Education | 2:30-3:45 TR | Ahn | Global | Explores a range of questions, including: What is globalization? What are the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of globalization? How is globalization linked to colonialism and the historically uneven process of capitalist development? Does globalization expand economic growth, democracy, human rights, or does it exacerbate poverty, inequality, the exploitation of natural resources, and the suppression of human rights? |
| 350-1 | Teaching and Learning in Diverse Settings | 9:30-10:45 TR | Gevelber | TBD | In this course students will explore and discuss research and perspectives on learner-centered teaching. Students will also learn teaching practices that are effective across diverse learning environments such as afterschool programs, non-profit organizations like museums and the Peace Corps, teaching assistant positions in graduate school, and K-12 school environments. These practices revolve around the careful alignment of learning objectives, instructional methods, and assessment activities. Principles of equity, social justice, and empowerment are central to these practices. |
| 412 | History of American Education | 9:55-10:45 MW++ | Berman | N/A | Examines the history of education in America from the colonization of North America to the present to consider education in its broadest sense - as a process of individual development and cultural transmission. Explores such topics as the rise of common schools in the urban North; the education of Native Americans, immigrants, slaves, and free blacks; the evolution of teacher training (primarily for women); various philosophies of "progressive" school reform; the politics of desegregation, bilingual education, and special education; the articulation between high school and college work; and the evolving federal role in American education. |
| 420 | Education in East Asia | 11-12:15 TR | Liu | Global | Learn about the values, histories, systems, policies, problems, and reforms of education in East Asian societies. You'll examine extended issues in comparative education, including education and its relation to economic development, social inequality and stratification, gender and family, ethnicity and migration, identity formation, and student movements. |
| 450 | Rethinking After-School Education | 4-5:15 TR | Grace | U.S. | Engage with and discuss historical, ideological, and contemporary issues within community-based after school programs at large and within the Madison context. Examine the social and political context of after school programs to better understand the ways in which they have the potential to meet important needs. |
| 500 | Critical Theory in Education | 2:30-3:45 MW | Baldacchino | TBD | Apart from surveying major themes associated with Critical Theory as it emerged from the 18th century to the present, in this class we will travel through notions of criticality over the horizon of education. The aim is to take an approach to ideas of equity, social justice, and conviviality from a wider intersectional perspective of difference and identity. Special attention will be given to current issues and how criticality in education plays its role in an age of populism and anti-politics. This class aims at an interest in forms of thinking and doing that help us problematize what appears to be immediate and fatalistically intractable—as often we are led to believe when we are told that individualism and happiness are just a matter of “winning” while equality and social justice belong to the language of “losers”. While a humane, just, and equitable society is often made to sound more aspirational than real, it is the sense of critical hope that urges us to engage with the present so we can identify better possibilities for the future of society and education. |
| 501 | Qualitative Research Methods in Education | 5:30-6:45 MW | Both | Examines qualitative research methods for educational research, including: the role of theory, how to develop a research question, how to design a study, how to interview and conduct observations, how to analyze data, and how to present an original qualitative research project. | |
| 505 | Issues in Urban Education | 9:30-10:45 TR | Posey-Maddox | U.S. | Explores urban education in the United States and its relationship to broader political, social, and economic contexts. Focuses on contemporary urban educational issues and students' experiences in school and community settings, the experiences of students and families of color and the relationship between race, class, gender, and inequality in urban education. |
| 515 | Holocaust: History, Memory, and Education | 2:30-3:45 MW | Schweber | TBD | Explores the ways in which Holocaust history, memory and education are mutually entangled, politically charged and morally complex. Using primarily American sites of memory, critically analyze a variety of representations of the Shoah--in literature, films, memoirs, monuments, museums and classrooms. |
| 560 | Gender and Education | 2:30-3:45 TR | Smolarek | Both | Examines the relationship between gender and education and explores notions of gender as socially constructed categories and identities. Identifies the ways schools (re)produce and mediate gender identities and explore the experiences of students. Draws on critical and feminist perspectives to analyze the ways gender intersects with understandings of identity performance and expression such as masculinity and femininity, as well as at the intersection of race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality in schooling processes. |
| 570 | Anthropology and Education | 1-2:15 TR | Lee | U.S. | Explores foundational concepts and methods of educational anthropology. Examines anthropological inquiry on educational research with particular reference to cultural perspectives on education and educational systems, learning as cultural transmission, and application of anthropological knowledge to curriculum. |
| 575 | Education Policy and Practice | 11-12:15 TR | Turner | U.S. | Examines research on teachers and teaching as an occupation, the everyday realities of classrooms, and a variety of frameworks for understanding the relationship between policy and educators' daily work. Considers teachers and administrators as implementers of local, state, and federal policies, while simultaneously designing and creating policies and practices themselves. |
| 595 | Language Politics and Education | 4-5:15 TR | Wolfgram | Both | Provides an overview of language politics, policies, and practices in global perspective; draws on the work of anthropologists, sociolinguists, and language policy scholars to examine how language choices in and regarding schooling interact with ethnic and linguistic diversity. Considers the following questions: How do language policies, practices, and pedagogies redress or exacerbate inequalities? How do people at the local level, including educators, negotiate language and literacy policies and politics? |
| 675 | Introduction to Comparative and International Education | 5-8 T | Liu | Global | Introduction to the origins and development of the field of comparative and international education (CIE) and to explore how scholars engage some of the theoretical, ideological, methodological, and topical debates that characterize research in the field of CIE policy. |
| Course | Title | Instructor | E.S. Focus |
++ means Discussion Section
MWR means Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
TR means Tuesday and Thursday
ED POL Spring 2023 Courses
| Course | Title | Time & Day | Instructor | E.S. Focus | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 107 | History of the University in the West | 4-5:15 TR | Farrelly | Both | Examines the development of higher education in Europe and the United States from the Middle Ages to the present. Asks how philosophy, pedagogy, people, politics, and places have shaped the intellectual and cultural history of the university. |
| 140 | Introduction to Education | 8-9:15 TR | Velazquez | Both | Considers core educational dilemmas in historical and global perspective. What’s the purpose of schools? Is schooling a public good or a private good? Do schools ameliorate or entrench inequality? Who should determine what is taught in schools and how? How do we know if schools are “working”? |
| 143 | History of Race and Inequality in U.S. Education | 9:55-10:45 MW++ | Stern | U.S. | This course can count as Humanities, Ethnic Studies, and/or Communication B. The 2020 racial uprisings powerfully challenged the racial and class disparities that plague the modern American metropolis. This class explores the history of those disparities and resistance to them with an emphasis on education, youth, housing, and criminal justice. Students will examine the relationships between metropolitan change, economic transformation, and the construction of race and how those processes have shaped mass incarceration, residential and school segregation, and the experiences of racial/ethnic minorities who have been marginalized or discriminated against. Key questions include: What is “race,” how has its meaning changed over time, and how has it historically shaped inequality and opportunity? What is the historical nature of inequality and opportunity in metropolitan America? What policies and ideas have promoted inequality, and how have those policies and ideas shifted over time? Lastly, how have marginalized people responded to inequality, and what have been the impacts of various modes of resistance? |
| 145 | Introduction to Education Policy | 2:30-3:45 TR | Turner | Both | Offers an introduction to K-12 education policy, policy processes, school governance in the United States. Examine: (1) the multiple and sometimes conflicting goals that animate education debates, (2) the discourses and representations of schools, students, and education policies that shape policy and politics, (3) research on education and education policy, and (4) the various lenses and conceptual tools that can help us understand education policy. Course materials include original policy texts, empirical and conceptual research, current events, and film. While the focus is on K-12 education in the United States, students are invited to consider how key themes from the course may be useful (or not) for thinking about early childhood education, higher education as well education in historical and global contexts. |
| 150-4 | Education Across the Americas | 9:30-10:45 TR | Rodriguez-Gomez | Both | Analyzes how the triad of empire, capitalism, and resistance shape education across the hemisphere. The class is organized along three axes: whiteness, empire, and schooling; public education and the modern state; and the privatization of public education to achieve this goal. In each axis, students will analyze the frictions between the state, the private sector, and educators, parents, and young people in defining the purposes of schooling. This course will analyze the educational discourses, exchanges, and processes connecting the continent including the Caribbean. The goal is to push beyond binary thinking and capture the interconnectedness of widely shared educational landscapes. |
| 150-5 | Incarceration and Education | 2:30-3:45 MW | Schweber | U.S. | Learn about the school to prison pipeline, the incarceration of disenfranchised people, the provision of education inside jails, and the impact of the privatization of prisons. |
| 150-6 | Internship in Education | Online-Asynchronous | Lesure | N/A | This course is only one credit. Students will earn academic credit for your Spring 2023 Internship. Internships will help students build their professional network, explore career pathways, boost themselves in future career endeavors. Already have a Spring 2023 Internship or need help finding one? Well then go to go.wisc.edu/56b787 for assistance and to enroll in this exciting new course! |
| 205 | Language and Social Inequality | 4-5:15 MW | Ahn | Both | Examine cultural and language politics, policies, and practices in education. Read in the fields of anthropology, sociolinguistics, and language policy to consider how language policies, politics, and practices either reinforce or reduce educational and social inequality in the U.S. Participate in a community-based learning site in order to put concepts from the course into practice and learn about possible careers in education. This is a community-based learning course. Over the course of the semester, students must complete a minimum of 25 hours of service. Volunteers will serve as one-on-one mentors for children and/or adults learning to read or people working to improve their knowledge and usage of English at partner sites. |
| 209 | Introduction to Quantitative Methods for Education | 1-2:15 TR | Claessens | Both | This course can count as Quantitative B. Sound education policy benefits from the use of reliable evidence, including good data and thorough analyses of both challenges and solutions. This course develops students’ understandings of existing data sets and their limitations, as well as how to perform different statistical analyses on those data sets in order to address specific policy questions. |
| 210 | Youth, Education and Society | Section 1: 1:20-2:10 TR++ Section 2: 11-11:50 MW++ | Hernandez | U.S. | This course can count as Ethnic Studies. Interrogates the concept of "youth" as a socially constructed category and examines how "youth" are positioned within educational, political, economic, and social contexts, with a particular focus on racially minoritized youth and those experiencing compounding layers of oppression. Explores themes such as: schooling; race; gender and sexuality; politics and activism; community-based learning; criminal justice; media; and popular culture. Draws on a variety of historical and contemporary "texts" and current events to study the lived experiences of young people situated within diverse racial, cultural, gendered, sexualized, and classed contexts. Students reflect on their own experiences as "youth," their relationship to education and other social institutions, and how it informs their understanding of society, educational theory and practice. |
| 212 | Education for Social Change | 11-12:15 TR | Posey-Maddox | Both | What is education for social justice? In what circumstances has schooling been used for social change, and how? This course explores theories and practices of education for social justice, a pedagogical-political approach based on participatory methodologies that is committed to positive social change. This includes popular education, peace and human rights education, critical pedagogy, and related approaches. We will consider theoretical debates, focusing on the ideas of transformative educators such as Paulo Freire and bell hooks, even as we examine radical educator collectives and transformative education efforts in districts, schools, classrooms, community associations, and NGOs from around the world. |
| 220 | Human Rights and Education | 2:30-3:45 MW | Kallon | Both | This course can count as Humanities. Explores questions related to human rights and education, from the individual to the global level and from the abstract to the practical: How do we learn to be human? What are human rights, and in what sense are they universal? What is the right to education, and what does it entail? What is human rights education? Focuses on educational case studies, including child rights, the war on drugs, and climate change. |
| 237 | Wealth, Poverty, and Inequality | 5:30-6:45pm TR | Timberlake | Both | How are wealth, poverty, and inequality defined and understood? How are they informed by histories of colonization, genocide, white supremacy, slavery, and dispossession? How do power relations of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, citizenship, nation, religion, language, and geography influence them? What are the historical and current theoretical and practical debates on poverty and ending poverty in the U.S. and globally? How do wealth, poverty, and inequality influence education, and how does education influence wealth, poverty, and inequality? What is the history of educational interventions purportedly charged with ameliorating poverty? What is our own relationship to poverty, wealth, and inequality? Ed Pol 237 will address these questions from a theoretical, historical, and practical perspective by providing an introduction to historical and contemporary debates on wealth, poverty and inequality. In doing so, the course will interrogate these debates in relation to the polities, practices, and institutions of education, and examine their articulations with relations of power like white supremacy, anti-blackness, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and classism. |
| 240 | Comparative Education | Section 1: 12:05-12:55 MWF Section 2: 1:20-2:10 MWF | Johnson | N/A | Examines the socio-cultural, political and economic forces that shape education around the world, including in the US. Explores a series of questions, including the purposes of schooling in different locations; the role of schooling in producing inequality or supporting social change, particularly in relation to class, race, gender, migration, language, and abilities; global educational reform; global educational assessments; student movements; and remote learning. |
| 300 | School and Society | Section 1: 1:20-2:10 TR++ Section 2: 11:00-11:50 MW++ Section 3: 12:05-12:55 MW++ | Otting | N/A | Asks how society shapes schooling, and conversely, the ways in which schools shape society. Examines political, social and cultural influences on school processes, policies, practices, and pedagogy. 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. Considers various contemporary debates about public schooling. Critically examines how educational practices and policies impact the lives of students. |
| 305 | Democracy and Education | 8:00-9:15 MW | Beneke | U.S. | This course can count as Communication B. Examines the values embedded in notions of “democracy” and their relationship with education, the role of education in a democracy, how the context of America’s capitalist democracy shapes debates about the role of education in democratic life, and the possibilities for deepening the relationship between democracy and education. |
| 320 | Climate Change, Sustainability & Education | 2:30-3:45 MW | Johnson | Both | This course can count as Natural Science. Provides an overview of theories and models of human-earth relations, and the causes and consequences of climate and environmental change. Develops a critical, global approach to examining the role of education, in school and out, in addressing crucial climate and environmental challenges. Includes a wide range of educational theories, projects, programs, levels, institutions, strategies, and policies. Asks how concepts of human-earth relations influence climate change and explores approaches that promise for a more sustaining global future. |
| 335 | Globalization and Education | 8-9:15 MW | Otting | Global | Explores a range of questions, including: What is globalization? What are the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of globalization? How is globalization linked to colonialism and the historically uneven process of capitalist development? Does globalization expand economic growth, democracy, human rights, or does it exacerbate poverty, inequality, the exploitation of natural resources, and the suppression of human rights? |
| 412 | History of American Education | 9:55-10:45 MW++ | Reese | N/A | Examines the history of education in America from the colonization of North America to the present to consider education in its broadest sense - as a process of individual development and cultural transmission. Explores such topics as the rise of common schools in the urban North; the education of Native Americans, immigrants, slaves, and free blacks; the evolution of teacher training (primarily for women); various philosophies of "progressive" school reform; the politics of desegregation, bilingual education, and special education; the articulation between high school and college work; and the evolving federal role in American education. |
| 450 | Rethinking After-School Education | 4-5:15 TR | Downing | U.S. | Engage with and discuss historical, ideological, and contemporary issues within community-based after school programs at large and within the Madison context. Examine the social and political context of after school programs to better understand the ways in which they have the potential to meet important needs. |
| 460 | Immigration, Education and Equity | 8-9:15am TR | Pheng | Both | This course can count as Ethnic Studies. Examines policy issues surrounding the education of children from immigrant families in K-16 educational settings in the U.S. Through readings, discussions, and assignments, participants examine the economic, social, political, and ideological contexts of immigration and education, as well as school factors and home-school relations. We also consider the impact of various policy and pedagogical approaches. Course readings draw from relevant literature in educational anthropology, sociology of education, educational policy, sociolinguistics, and language pedagogy. |
| 500 | Participatory Action Research | 4-5:15 MW | Wolfgram | Both | Students will collaborate with community actors on research projects, and together they’ll deploy research evidence to inform projects of social change. Through readings, in-class discussions, and responsive writing projects, students in this course will learn about PAR inquiry, including its history, methods, theories, ethics, and logistics. Additionally, students will collaborate with refugee resettlement providers at Jewish Social Services and advocates in refugee communities in Madison to develop and conduct a pilot PAR study, in order to identify ways to better support the resettlement and flourishing of refugees in our community. |
| 518 | Higher Education Policy | 1-2:15 TR | Odle | U.S. | Critical examination of debates in contemporary higher education policy. Explores the sociocultural tensions among key policy goals such as quality, equity, and efficiency, and the results (including unintended consequences) of those tensions. Examines the theory and research brought to bear on policy debates, and how they are used-or not used-to shape policy agendas. |
| 545 | Philosophical Conceptions of Teaching and Learning | 11-12:15 TR | Brighouse | U.S. | This course can count as Humanities. Examination and analysis of conceptions of and approaches to teaching and learning. It provides a forum to examine teaching and learning, with special attention to pedagogy and practice. The course is especially geared for those interested in pursuing teaching as a career or dedicated to thinking critically about teaching and learning. |
| 560 | Gender and Education | 2:30-3:45 TR | Smolarek | Both | Examines the relationship between gender and education and explores notions of gender as socially constructed categories and identities. Identifies the ways schools (re)produce and mediate gender identities and explore the experiences of students. Draws on critical and feminist perspectives to analyze the ways gender intersects with understandings of identity performance and expression such as masculinity and femininity, as well as at the intersection of race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality in schooling processes. |
| 600-1 | Secondary Data Analysis | 2:25-5:25 W | Liu | Both | Introduces methods for managing and analyzing secondary data, or data that was not collected for specific research purposes. Focus on quantitative techniques; use secondary data; use statistical software to complete assignments. |
| 648 | Sociology of Education | 1-2:15 TR | Posey-Maddox | U.S. | Uses 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. In this class’s focus on inequality in public education, this class will examine how schools relate to broader structures, institutions, and practices. |
| Course | Title | Instructor | E.S. Focus |
Research Opportunities
Undergraduate Research Scholars Program
The Undergraduate Research Scholars (URS) program is a high-impact practice (HIP) at UW. The program facilitates learning both the skills of your field and acquiring an interdisciplinary perspective on research, and creative practices.
Ronald E. McNair Program
The McNair program is an opportunity for underrepresented students to conduct research under the guidance of a faculty member and receive a research stipend. Students will also learn plenty about graduate school.
Summer Education Research Program (SERP)
This program provides traditionally underrepresented undergraduate students interested in pursuing graduate studies related to the School of Education the opportunity to engage in independent research.
Educational Policy Studies
Our department provides courses that offer research opportunities such as Participatory Action Research (500), Research and Evaluation in Education (150), and more. Also, feel free to check out our faculty that you can possibly do research with.
Career Development/Advising Events
- March
- March 31
- April
- April 3
- April 4
- April 4Intern and Study in Washington, DCInfo Session4:00 PM, Study Abroad Resource Center (3rd Floor Red Gym)
- April 5Bagel Wednesday at the Career Exploration CenterOccurs every Wednesday from March 22 - April 19 in 114 Ingraham9:00 AM
Student Life Events
- March
- March 31
- March 31
- April
- April 4Election Day In Wisconsin, including same-day registrationWisconsin Election for Supreme Court, Mayor, Alders, School Board, and Judges.7:00 AM, Find your polling place at myvote.wi.gov
- April 4Intern and Study in Washington, DCInfo Session4:00 PM, Study Abroad Resource Center (3rd Floor Red Gym)
- April 4