Education affects the lives of everyone in this country. As future professionals, voters, teachers, parents, and leaders, students at the University of Michigan will help shape the quality of life in the United States, and education will matter – a lot. This course will introduce students to the role of education in today’s world. Topics will include the implications for schooling our increasingly diverse population; principles of how kids learn; ways schools facilitate student achievement (or not); and the changing nature of literacy in the information age. In addition to readings and discussions, there will be opportunities for hands-on experience and interactions with K-12 students in schools.  

EDUC 118 is an approved course to satisfy the LSA Race and Ethnicity Requirement.

This class meets the Race & Ethnicity requirement.

Education Policy in a Multicultural Society explores policy and school improvement, and focuses in particular on the U.S. public school system, with an emphasis on both equity and access. In this course we begin by asking: what is public education for, and then consider how schools can be improved so that educational outcomes are ambitious and equitable. We build on students' understandings of the practice of teaching, developed in ED118, to investigate the dynamics of education reform.

We closely examine authentic texts – including artifacts from our own experiences in schools, as well as mandates and legislative texts, policies, data on school improvement, and other resources designed for the improvement of schools. We critically examine each of these, looking for assumptions about teaching and learning and their improvement, assessing the key levers for improvement that they provide, and extrapolating implications for the design and valuation of change. In so doing students will develop critical skills of analysis and interpretation that will enable them to (1) better understand and evaluate efforts to improve schooling in the United States, (2) collaborate substantively, (3) and write and speak about educational policy persuasively. Given the courses strong focus on equity and access, issues of inclusion, voice, and rigor will be consistent through-lines.

In this course students extend what they have learned about U.S. schools and the institutions that serve public schools through extensive and varied practicums in these organizations and institutions. Students will acquire hands-on experience, in work nested inside an institution that serves and supports children, schools, and their communities.

PALS is designed to give undergraduate and Master’s students experience working with students, families, teachers, and community members in K-12 public school settings. Students will gain insight into university-school partnerships and the ways that such partnerships can support the academic, social, and emotional development of children and youth. The course is framed from a positive youth development perspective and emphasizes the personal, familial, school, and community factors that promote resilience and optimal development of children and youth typically deemed “at-risk”.

In this service-learning course students explore the language, educational, health, and legal issues facing migrant farmworkers in southeast Michigan. As students come to understand the needs of these communities, they learn and practice methods and techniques for teaching ESL to this mixed-proficiency, primarily Spanish-speaking population.

Crosslisted with AMCULT 361, LATINOAM 361, LING 391, RCSSCI 395, RCSTP 395