EDUC365

Description

This course is the first of two required courses for incoming Ed.D students. It offers an introduction to theoretical concepts and concerns that are central in understanding the complex relationships between education and society. In doing so, it offers students tools to partake in social and cultural critique of education as it intersects with various facets of social life. As it is a course on critical social theory, we will be attentive to power. This will be instructive in our efforts to understand and confront the everyday violences of inequality and the consolidation and maintenance of hierarchies. Through engagement with critical theory, we will open up dialogue around the reproductive and transformative potential of schooling. We will consider education more broadly, in society. This will involve theorizing the role of the state in relation to capitalism and the implications for education as a site of both social reproduction and resistance. This course asks some of the following questions: What are the purposes of education? What is the relationship between social structure and individual subjectivity? How is education always interwoven with the social production of identities? What are the epistemic and ontological logics that structure what is taught and learned within educational sites? Finally, as a foundational course for your doctoral studies, this course will work to build a scholarly community among the cohort and we will partake in discussions related to graduate school life.