Learning Goals in Education

The department approaches learning from a socio-cultural perspective that views sense-making as a situative, interactive process that is always in motion. This means student understandings of course materials are also always in motion. Through a range of course dialogues, participation in community and school experiences, critical reading of texts, self-reflection and argument construction in writing, and engagement with other course and program activities, the department supports students continuous understandings of topics and tensions in Educational Studies. It is our hope that this learning process will support student participation in the social world with a politically and socially conscious stance towards education that enables them to act as informed and vociferous advocates for just social relations that support children, families, and communities. More specifically, we aim to help students:

1. Develop an active and engaged understanding of Education as an academic field of study.

2. Develop an active and engaged understanding of how educational structures, policies and practices across the P-20 continuum are situated within an array of cultural, economic, historical, political, and social ideas and contexts.

3. Develop an active and engaged understanding of the historical and contemporary experiences of individuals and social groups in schools, including along the lines of race and ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality, language and culture, and religion.

4. Develop tools of critical self-reflection that support situating individual educational experiences within the broader landscape of educational experiences.

5. Develop an active and engaged understanding of approaches to teaching and learning that are culturally relevant and culturally sustainable.