Courses

Lisa Rosen  |  T 12:30 – 3:20 PM

How and why do educational outcomes and experiences vary across student populations? What role do schools play in a society’s system of stratification? How do schools both contribute to social mobility and to the reproduction of the prevailing social order? This course examines these questions through the lens of social and cultural theory, engaging current academic debates on the causes and consequences of social inequality in educational outcomes. We will engage these debates by studying foundational and emerging theories and examining empirical research on how social inequalities are reproduced or ameliorated through schools. Through close readings of historical, anthropological and sociological case studies of schooling in the U.S, students will develop an understanding of the structural forces and cultural processes that produce inequality in neighborhoods and schools, how they contribute to unequal opportunities, experiences, and achievement outcomes for students along lines of race/ethnicity, class, gender, and immigration status, and how students themselves navigate and interpret this unequal terrain. We will cover such topics as neighborhood and school segregation; peer culture; social networks; elite schooling; the interaction between home, society and educational institutions; and dynamics of assimilation for students from immigrant communities.

Emilia Wenzel  |  W 10:30 AM – 1:20 PM

In this course, we will investigate critical issues within early childhood education. The questions we will engage with throughout the course are: What makes early childhood a pivotal stage of development? How do families, teachers and preschool curricula shape children’s experiences? How do systemic inequalities manifest in early learning environments? We will address these questions by examining early learning contexts through various interdisciplinary lenses including developmental psychology, sociology, public policy and education. The course will examine the state of early childhood education in the US, the role of parents and communities, ways to affirm identity in the early years, the influence of teachers in early learning environments and strategies to support early math and language development. Research, policy and real-world examples will drive learning for this course, enabling us to bridge theory and practice. Throughout the quarter, we will search for academic sources as well as news sources to deeply engage with critical issues within early childhood education.

Kate O’Doherty  |  T R 12:30 – 1:50 PM

This discussion-based, advanced seminar is designed to investigate how preschool and elementary students think, act, and learn, as well as examine developmentally appropriate practices and culturally responsive teaching in the classroom. This course emphasizes the application of theory and research from the field of psychology to the realm of teaching and learning in contemporary classrooms. Course concepts will be grounded in empirical research and activities geared towards understanding the nuances and complexities of topics such as cognitive development (memory, attention, language), early assessment systems, standardized testing, “mindset”, “grit”, exercise/nutrition, emotion regulation, and more.

Ariel Kalil 

The goal of this course is to introduce students to the literature on early child development and explore how an understanding of core developmental concepts can inform social policies. This goal will be addressed through an integrated, multidisciplinary approach. The course will emphasize research on the science of early child development from the prenatal period through school entry. The central debate about the role of early experience in development will provide a unifying strand for the course. Students will be introduced to research in neuroscience, psychology, economics, sociology, and public policy as it bears on questions about “what develops?”, critical periods in development, the nature vs. nurture debate, and the ways in which environmental contexts (e.g., parents, families, peers, schools, institutions, communities) affect early development and developmental trajectories. The first part of the course will introduce students to the major disciplinary streams in the developmental sciences and the enduring and new debates and perspectives within the field. The second part will examine the multiple contexts of early development to understand which aspects of young children’s environments affect their development and how those impacts arise. Throughout the course, we will explore how the principles of early childhood development can guide the design of policies and practices that enhance the healthy development of young children.

Ming-Te Wang   |  T 9:30 AM – 12:20 PM

This course focuses on developmental pathways from middle childhood through adolescence within the context of school, family, community, and culture. Because human development is an applied field, we will be paying special attention to how sociocultural and historical influences affect academic, socioemotional, and identity development in the context of real-world challenges and opportunities faced by adolescents. In addition to learning about developmental and sociocultural theories, students will apply research to policy and practice by creating resources geared toward youth, parents, or those who work with youth. 

Melinh Lai  |  T R 2:00 – 3:20 PM

What is the relationship between physical processes in the brain and body and the processes of thought and consciousness that constitute our mental life? Philosophers and others have puzzled over this question for millennia. Many have concluded it to be intractable. In recent decades, the field of cognitive science–encompassing philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and other disciplines–has proposed a new form of answer. The driving idea is that the interaction of the mental and the physical may be understood via a third level of analysis: that of the computational. This course offers a critical introduction to the elements of this approach, and surveys some of the alternative models and theories that fall within it. Readings are drawn from a range of historical and contemporary sources in philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and computer science. 

Marshall Jean  |  T R 3:30 – 4:50 PM 

This course examines the social organization of formal education – how schools are shaped by the social context in which they are situated, and how students’ experiences in turn shape our society. It focuses specifically on schools as the link between macrosociological phenomena (e.g. culture, political systems, segregation, inequality) and the microsociological interactions of individual students and educators. The focus will be on contemporary American education, although lessons from the past and abroad will inform our learning. Prior introductory coursework in sociology will be useful but is not required.

Rosen  |  T 2:00 - 4:50 PM 

This course examines the dynamic relations between schooling and identity. We will explore how schools both enable and constrain the identities available to students and the consequences of this for academic achievement. We will examine these relations from multiple disciplinary perspectives, applying psychological, anthropological, sociological, and critical theories to understanding how students not only construct identities for themselves within schools, but also negotiate the identities imposed on them by others. Topics will include the role of peer culture, adult expectations, school practices, and enduring social structures in shaping processes of identity formation in students and how these processes influence school engagement and achievement. We will consider how these processes unfold at all levels of schooling, from preschool through college, and for students who navigate a range of social identities, from marginalized to privileged.

Instructor: Numanbayraktaroglu  |  T R 2:00 - 3:20 PM 

This course provides an overview of theory and research on bilingualism. Through a critical examination of psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic approaches to bilingualism, we will aim to arrive at a comprehensive account of bilingual experience and its practical implications for education and mental health in a globalizing world.

In the course, we will address the following topics:

1. Theoretical and methodological foundations of bilingualism and multilingualism.
2. Bilingual and multilingual society, super-diversity, and translanguaging.
3. The relationship between bilingualism and cognition, emotion, and self.
4. Code-switching and identity.
5. Implications of bilingualism for education.

It is expected that, by the end of the course, you will develop a comprehensive understanding of bilingualism and multilingualism and apply this knowledge to your academic and professional context.

Casillas Tice  |  T TR 11:00 AM -12:20 PM 

This course examines the social and cognitive mechanisms that drive language learning in the first few years of life. Nearly all children learn the language(s) of their community, despite the fact that human languages and caregiving practices offer immense diversity around the globe. What enables the learning system to adapt so robustly to the environment it finds itself in? We discuss the evidence for and against multiple factors that have been proposed to support language development across the world’s communities. We also critically examine how these ideas intersect with current deficit models of language learning. It is expected that, by the end of the course, students will grasp the basic mechanisms proposed to underlie early language learning.

Raikhel |  TR 2:00 - 4:50 PM

This course draws on a range of perspectives from across the interpretive, critical, and humanistic social sciences to examine the issues of mental health, illness, and distress in higher education.

Instructor: Vasan   |  W 9:30 AM – 12:20 PM

Undergraduate and MA students only. This seminar centers individuals who reside on the margins of formal education in the US. We will focus on the ways of knowing, being, and doing that are marked as deviant in the context of education in the United States through a study of the experiences of students and educators holding non-dominant social locations due to their race, sexuality, gender, disability, and/or class. Course materials will primarily concern public K-12 schooling, with some supplementary readings from non-school educational contexts. In responding to course readings, we will consider together questions such as: What does education look like for students and teachers who occupy “deviant” social locations? What can we learn about educational realities and possibilities from the perspectives of students and teachers who hold non-dominant identities? What types of individual and collective action are available to those who occupy the margins of public schooling? What is the role of the researcher in producing scholarship that bears accurate and care-full witness to experiences outside of the mainstream? In this course, we will engage largely with empirical qualitative scholarship, as well as conceptual and theoretical texts, from anthropological, sociological, developmental, and non-academic scholars.

Lebowski | 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM 

What is the relationship between physical processes in the brain and body and the processes of thought and consciousness that constitute our mental life? Philosophers and others have puzzled over this question for millennia. Many have concluded it to be intractable. In recent decades, the field of cognitive science–encompassing philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and other disciplines–has proposed a new form of answer. The driving idea is that the interaction of the mental and the physical may be understood via a third level of analysis: that of the computational. This course offers a critical introduction to the elements of this approach, and surveys some of the alternative models and theories that fall within it. Readings are drawn from a range of historical and contemporary sources in philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and computer science. 

Instructor: Bose | M W 3:00 - 4:20 PM 

In 1900, the Swedish feminist sociologist, Ellen Key wrote a book called The Century of the Child, anticipating the age when “childhood” as a social construct would universally come under unprecedented legal, cultural and political scrutiny. Taking a cue from Key’s work, this course explores how the “child” became the center of many social, cultural, religious and educational controversies in the history of modern South Asia. We will examine how “childhood” with an accompanying notion of "infantilization", was not only a potent concept in questions of empire, civilization and racial hierarchies, but also one that still gets invoked in contemporary conversations about “development” and “progress”. Being a concept loaded with discourses of power, “childhood” lends itself to ideologically inconsistent formations. On one hand, we will see how colonial educational policies, nationalist reckonings and postcolonial reconstructions have variously positioned the “normative child” as the future of the nation, society and family. On the other hand, we will note how children, whose lives do not follow the normative codes, could be perceived as unchildlike, vis-à-vis their class, caste and gender identities. By centering the figure of the “child”, we will examine how children’s literature, textbooks, biographies, short stories, photographs, advertisements and comics could be important sources for rethinking institutions, social systems and cultural genres of South Asia.