As long as there has been educational research in the United States, there has been frustration over the gap between education theory and educational practice. This course attempts to hold the two in dialectical tension, expanding the horizon of theoretical ideas while simultaneously implementing specific strategies for facilitating classroom activities. Specifically, each week of the course will explore a different teaching format in the classroom, while different structural issues of education are studied in a parallel set of readings.

Week 1: Philosophy of Education

• Dewey, John. 1934. The need for a philosophy of education. New Era in Home and School 15: 211-214.
• Giroux, Henry A. and Peter McLaren. 1986. Teacher education and the politics of engagement: The case for democratic schooling. Harvard Educational Review 56(3):213-239.
• Mohr, Richard D. 1988. The ethics of students and the teaching of ethics: A lecturing. In: Gays/Justice. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 293-311.

Additional optional readings:
• “Philosophy of Education” Wikipedia.com – Accessed December 16, 2012.

Week 2: Socratic Method

• Garlikov, Rick. 2006. The Socratic method: Teaching by asking instead of telling. Retrieved October 3, 2012 from http://utopianplace.com/The_Socratic_Method.pdf
• “The Socratic Method” Wikipedia.com – Accessed December 16, 2012.
• Von Foerster, Heinz. 1997. Lethology: A theory of learning and knowing vis-à-vis undeterminables, undecidables, unknowables. Revista Universidad Eafit, Julio-Agosto-Septiembre 1997: 13-30.

Additional optional readings (from Michael Brawn):
• Boghossian, Pete. 2003. How socratic pedagogy works. Informal Logic 23(2):17-25.
• Boghassian, Peter. 2006. Socratic pedagogy, critical thinking, and inmate education. The Journal of Correctional Education 57(1):42-63.
• Diller, Ann. 1998. Facing the torpedo fish: Becoming a philosopher of one’s own education. Philosophy of Education Yearbook, 1998. Accessed March 7, 2012, at: www.ed.uiuc.edu/eps/PES-Yearbook/1998/diller.html
• Ayim, Maryann. 1998. The Canadian beaver confronts the torpedo fish: Performing our own philosophy as educators. Philosophy of Education Yearbook, 1998. Accessed March 7, 2012, at: www.ed.uiuc.edu/eps/PES-Yearbook/1998/ayim.html

Week 3: The Banking Method

• Freire, Paulo. 1972. Pedagogy of the oppressed. (Chapter 2) Great Britain: Penguin Books, 45-59.
• Ellsworth, Elizabeth. 1989. Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review 59(3): 297-324.
• McLaren, Peter. 1989. Critical pedagogy: A look at the major concepts. Chapter 6 in: Critical Pedagogy: An Overview. New York: Longman, 166-191.

Additional optional readings:
• Darder, Antonia, Marta Baltodano, and Rodolfo D. Torres. 2009. Critical pedagogy: An introduction. In: The Critical Pedagogy Reader. 2nd Ed. New York: Routledge, 1-21.

Week 4: Critiques of Progressive Education

• Counts, George S. 1932. Dare the school build a new social order? Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
• Hopkins, Richard L. 1976. Freedom and education: The philosophy of Summerhill. Educational Philosophy 26(2):188-213.

Additional optional readings:
• Dewey, John. 1938/1997. Education and Experience. New York: Simon and Schuster.

From Spankey:
• Whitehead, A.N. 1916/1948. The aims of education: A plea for reform. The Mathematical Gazette, Vol. 32, No. 300, 110-119.

Week 5: The Project Method

• Kilpatrick William H. 1918. The project method. Teachers College Record 19:319-335.
• Knoll Michael. 1997. The project method: Its vocational educational origin and international development. Journal of Industrial Education 34(3):59-80.

Week 6: From Critical Theory to Cultural Studies

• Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. Adorno. 1999 (orig. 1944; trans. 1972). The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception. In: Dialektik der aufklärung (1944), translated Dialectic of Enlightenment (1972) by John Cumming. New York: Continuum.
• Hall, Stuart. 1980. Encoding/decoding. In: Marris, Paul and Sue Thruham (Eds.). 1996. Media studies: A reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Giroux, Henry A. 1995. Is there a place for cultural studies in colleges of education? Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 17(2):127-142.

Slavoj Žižek – First as Tragedy, Then as Farce.

From Elfego Nuñez:
• Hall, Stuart. 1995. Ethnicity: Identity and difference. Radical America 23(4): 9-20.

From Daniel Graves:
• Freire, Paulo, and Donaldo P. Macedo. 1995. A dialogue: Culture, Language, and Race. Harvard Educational Review 65(3): 377-402.

Week 7: Consciousness Raising

• Greene, Maxine. 1971. Curriculum and consciousness. Teachers College Record 73(2):253-269.

A Class Divided (featuring Jane Elliott) – PBS Frontline (1985)

Week 8: Morals/Ethics and “Caring”

• Noddings, Nel. 1988. An ethic of caring and its implications for instructional arrangements. American Journal of Education 96(2): 215-230.
• Groening, Matt. 1987. School is hell. (Excerpts.) New York: Pantheon Books.

Week 9

STUDENT PRESENTATIONS

Week 10: The Author

• Barthes, Roland. 1967. Death of the author. Aspen 5-6.
• Foucault, Michel. 1969. What is an author? In: Norton Anthology of Literary Criticism. (2010) New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1475-1490.
• Scott, Robert. 2011. Heinz von Foerster’s heuristics course: A factor in the development of second-order cybernetics in the United States. Kybernetes 40(7/8):1149–1158.

Week 11: Media Literacy

• Giroux, Henry A., and Roger I. Simon. 1988. Schooling, popular culture, and a pedagogy of possibility. Journal of Education 170(1): 9–26.
• Tavin, Kevin M., and David Anderson. 2003. Deconstructing Disney in the elementary art classroom. Art Education 56(3): 21-35.

Week 12: School Ownership

• Wells, Amy S., Alejandra Lopez, Janelle Scott, and Jennifer Jellison Holme. 1999. Charter schools as postmodern paradox: Rethinking social stratification in an age of deregulated school choice. Harvard Educational Review 69(2):172-204.
• Ravitch, Diane. 2010. The myth of charter schools. New York Review of Books, November 11, 2010. Online edition: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/

Week 13: Anti-school Philosophies of Education

• Illich, Ivan. 1971. Deschooling society. (Excerpt) New York: Harper & Row.
• Bremer, John, and Michael von Moschzisker. 1971. Introduction. In: The School without walls: Philadelphia’s parkway program. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Week 14

STUDENT PRESENTATIONS

Week 15

STUDENT PRESENTATIONS