EDUC 018. Critical Perspectives

In this course, students strengthen their critical reading, writing, and thinking skills by examining a selected theme for the semester. The course is designed to support the development of critical analysis and reflection in a workshop format, as students read, write, talk, and think together doing projects of significance to learners and institutions, such as schools, and in the interest of civic engagement, engaged scholarship, and social justice. The course will draw upon historical, socio-political, research, and theoretical frameworks to explore questions of engagement, stasis, reform, and change. This course may or may not include fieldwork.

The Spring 2027 course is Critical Perspectives: Investigating the impact of attacks on DEI over the past 6 years. This course explores contemporary problems of practices that arise in schools today from a sociological perspective, as the country at large and individual citizens wrestle with formerly settled questions with regard to student and teacher identity, censorship, pluralism, democracy, and diversity. We will look at the campaigns to discredit Critical Race Theory and DEI, as well as the executive orders and court decisions that grapple with their legality. We will explore documents from the Heritage Foundation and other organizations working to shape public policy today. Finally, we will read texts that examine how governments impact education-and how democracy and fascism demand different outcomes from schools. Case studies from the instructor’s consulting work with schools will root the exploration, as students will be invited to wrestle with real life scenarios.

Prerequisite: EDUC 014: Pedagogy and Power, or permission from the instructor.
Social sciences.
1 credit.
Eligible for ESCH.
Spring 2027. Michael.

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