Educational Studies MA Courses
Required CoursesSpecific topic areas of study include: Issues of Difference: Gender, Class and Race; politics and education; class, culture and education; educational problems in historical and philosophical perspectives; minority status and learning; literacy; inter-cultural and cross-cultural education; school and society; curriculum, popular culture and education; and comparative and intercultural education. Courses listed indicate the full range of offerings. They are offered subject to the availability of faculty and (with the exception of a minimum of six core courses) not all in a given year.
Description:
This course is a forum for common inquiry and reflection upon issues that have deep significance for our lives as human beings, students, and educators. Some emphasis is placed on gaining an understanding of historically significant philosophical positions and their application to problems of teaching and education. However, the primary focus is on cultivating a desire and commitment to engage in philosophical thinking as it applies to matters of concern to teachers and teaching. The course is premised on a number of questions. These include but are not limited to: What is education? How do we understand education in its moral, ethical and spiritual dimensions? What role does education play (or have the potential of playing) in personal and social transformation? What is effective teaching and how can we cultivate the courage to teach effectively?Component(s):
"Lecture"Description:
This course acquaints students with a broad historical approach to a variety of significant educational issues. The emphasis will be placed on the examination of a number of critical components of modern educational thought and practice (comprising e.g., alternative schools of educational thought, politics and education, the changing curriculum, or the organization of schooling) as seen and presented in historical perspective.Component(s):
"Lecture"Description:
The course introduces the students to qualitative methods in educational research. The first purpose is to review studies of education which utilize anthropological concepts and/or methods. The second purpose is to examine the three principal foci of qualitative research in the area: a. schools and their relations with the socio-cultural milieu in which they exist; b. the description and analysis of classroom processes; c. the study of individual pupils and educators. The third purpose is to assess the strengths and weaknesses of studies focusing on these areas. This includes describing and discussing some of the systematic methodological biases apparent in the literature and suggesting directions for future research.Component(s):
"Lecture"Description:
By providing an overview of the commonly used research methods in education today, students gain the knowledge required to critique research that is reported in the education and social science literature. Topics include the nature of educational research, the different qualitative and quantitative research approaches, types of data collection, and knowledge of research ethics. Students gain experience in developing a research statement and writing a research proposal.Description:
This course is concerned with the investigation and comparison of problems of education in the context of time and society. Concentrating on concrete “case studies” chosen from the 19th century and the contemporary period, it focuses on the principles on which systems of education are constructed, and their change or retention, in the broad socio-economic and ideological context.Component(s):
"Lecture"Description:
This course is concerned with the family, the educational system, the economy and the polity, and with the relations between them. The main focus is with social institutions and the socialization process with which they are involved. Particular emphasis is placed on the social class differentials in the conditions of socialization and educational opportunity, and on social class differentials in educational achievement.Component(s):
"Lecture"Description:
This course is designed as a survey at an advanced level, of the theory and practice of adult education through an examination of the existing literature. Emphasis will be placed on helping the student gain knowledge, understanding, and a critical perspective of the following: aims; history and philosophy; needs and characteristics of adult learners; functions and skills of adult education practitioners; settings, agencies and program areas; and planning and evaluation in adult education. A Canadian and Quebec perspective will be emphasized.Component(s):
"Lecture"Topics Courses
Description:
This advanced course focuses on the power and politics involved in educational policy making and analysis. Students engage a variety of challenging theoretical and methodological approaches for conceptualizing, analyzing and critiquing educational policy. Contemporary educational policy reforms and issues are considered. Students examine assumptions informing different analyses of the policy process and apply the various models to their own research.Component(s):
"Seminar"Notes:
Description:
This course explores the ways in which social media may provide a space to educate about peace and peace education. Students examine how the emergence of social media profoundly shaped the ways humans understand society. This course explores the potential of social media as an educational space in which sustainable peace nationally and internationally is realized.Component(s):
"Seminar"Notes:
- Students who have received credit for this topic under an ESTU 642 number may not take this course for credit.
Description:
This course examines some of the most notable departures from standard patterns of age-graded schooling, including historical figures and more recent theorists. Students examine radical theories critically, with an eye both to historical context and the viability of the reforms suggested. Students also consider how some of these theories have been adapted by contemporary social movements.Component(s):
"Seminar"Notes:
- Students who have received credit for this topic under an ESTU 608 number may not take this course for credit.
Description:
This course aims to take students beyond and across the boundaries of cultures, nations, and academic disciplines. It explores the ethical dilemmas that individuals face as both citizens of a particular nation-state and "citizens" of the world. Just as there are tensions between local and global, although both are connected and interdependent, local/national and global/international citizenship place varied and conflicting demands on individuals. Students learn how global citizenship in the educational arena is impossible without an unrestricted recognition of global interdependence.Component(s):
"Seminar"Notes:
- Students who have received credit for this topic under an ESTU 642 number may not take this course for credit.
Description:
In this course students develop their understanding of community-based and participatory research (CBPR) methods and methodologies (including participatory visual methodologies, institutional ethnography, anti-colonial research and other methods of inquiry) aimed at addressing local social, environmental, and educational concerns. Starting with experiential knowledge of people and communities, students learn about relationship building for creating and sustaining community partnerships, as well as different methods of data collection, analysis, interpretation, dissemination of research findings, and negotiating the ongoing ethical considerations of community-based and participatory research.Component(s):
"Seminar"Notes:
- Students who have received credit for this topic under an ESTU 676 number may not take this course for credit.
Description:
This course engages with theories, ways of knowing and values aligned with non-hierarchal and anti-oppressive education about climate change education in the current climate emergency. Topics may include environmental and land-based education; alternative and anarchist pedagogies; popular education; systems thinking; urban political ecology; responsible consumption; and community-based learning.Component(s):
"Seminar"Notes:
- Students who have received credit for this topic under an ESTU 642 number may not take this course for credit.
Description:
This course explores the vital links between education and culture(s) in pluricultural societies. In this respect, ‘education’ is defined and understood in broad terms as the societal institution instrumental in knowledge formation that helps individuals understand other institutions and social processes. The course examines how knowledge about pluriculturalism is constructed, its strengths and weaknesses and what more can be done to support pluriculturalism.Component(s):
"Seminar"Notes:
- Students who have received credit for this topic under an ESTU 641 number may not take this course for credit.
Description:
This course explores theories and practices of popular education, and learning through social movements. Popular education or "education for the people" is a pedagogical-political approach based on participatory methodologies which concurrently addresses issues of knowledge and power and promotes collaborative criticality of “reality” for progressive social change. In relation to social movements, this course engages with texts that help bridge the gap between social movement theorizing and actual social movement learning.Component(s):
"Seminar"Notes:
- Students who have received credit for this topic under an ESTU 640 number may not take this course for credit.
Description:
This course addresses critical literature on visual pedagogies. It brings together established and innovative discussions in education around visual pedagogies, the roles of images of schooling and in curricular material, how pedagogies are visually performed, the roles of power and representation and the ethics around research through visual approaches. This class introduces students to the dynamic area of visual pedagogies and visual and artistic or creative approaches to research.Component(s):
"Seminar"General Courses (All Options)
Thesis and Directed Study Courses
Description:
This capstone research component allows students to prepare the proposal for their directed study: an extended essay or research project conducted independently by the student, which explores in-depth a topic arising from earlier in studies for this degree. The proposal describes the topic of the directed study and its importance, as well as how the student plans to address the topic in the directed study.Component(s):
"Independent Study"; "Research"Notes:
- This course is graded on a pass/fail basis.
Description:
This course allows students to complete the project described in the proposal for the directed study: an extended essay or research project conducted independently by the student and that explores in depth a topic arising from earlier studies for this degree. The directed study follows the plan presented in the proposal and results in a finished work.Component(s):
"Independent Study"; "Research"Notes:
- This course is graded on a pass/fail basis.