PhD Program in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education

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Curriculum, Instruction, & Teacher Education Ph. D.
Courses for Fall 2012

 

For a full listing of courses, see the university schedule of courses.

 

TE 901: Proseminar in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education I
Tuesdays, 4:10 to 7:00 pm, Location TBD
Instructors: Dr. Michele Purdy and Dr. Anne-Lise Halvorsen

NOTE: This class is limited to all first year doctoral students.

TE 901 is the first of two proseminar courses required of all entering students in the doctoral program in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education (CITE). TE901 also serves as the proseminar for students entering the all-college Educational Policy doctoral program.

TE901 is intended to provide a foundation for doctoral study. The experience will introduce students to an array of questions about education, immerse students in seminal works in the education literature, and induct students into ways of framing and pursuing issues that they will draw on in the rest of their scholarly careers. TE901 draws on the literature about the historical, social, and educational context in and outside the U.S. and the connection between a) historical, social, and educational issues and b) teaching and learning in elementary and secondary classrooms. Specifically, it focuses on four core strands: the history of U.S. education; international education; social and educational theory; and contemporary issues in education. In addition to helping students build foundational knowledge in education, the course aims to help students develop skills in analysis, scholarly writing, and oral discourse.

 

TE904: ELL/ESL Research and Practice: K-12
Wednesdays, 12:40-3:30 p.m., ROOM
Instructor: Dr. Guofang Li

NOTE: This course is part of the Literacy Specialization.

This course is intended for doctoral and advanced masters’ students who are interested in second language learning and teaching or issues concerning second language learners, immigrant and/or minority students. The purpose of this doctoral seminar is to explore the theoretical, pedagogical and research issues pertaining to second language literacy learning and teaching in K-12 settings in a pluralist society. Through selected US and international cases, this course examines more general concerns related to research, teaching, and learning a second language in multilingual and multicultural contexts. We begin at the macro-level to explore issues such as socio-political contexts of second language literacy teaching and learning, theoretical development in the field, and current research methods. We then move to the micro-level to consider teaching and learning in and out of the multicultural classroom. Students in this course will be able to learn:

  • important sociocultural and socio-political contexts for research in second language teaching and learning;
  • methods in second language research;
  • theoretical development in biliteracy/bilingualism, multiliteracies/mulitilingualism, and syncretic literacies;
  • current methods and curricula in second language teaching;
  • diverse socio-cultural and socio-psychological factors (i.e., identity, motivation, gender, race, and class) influencing second language learning; and
  • issues concerning building parent, school, and community partnerships for second language learners;
  • issues concerning the preparation and professional learning of pre-service and in-service teachers of English language learners.

Students in this course will read articles and books related to these topics as well as conduct a small case study or a literature review about second language teaching and learning. They are expected to critically think about texts and class discussions in order to analyze, synthesize, and build texts, and to use the knowledge gained in this course to develop and/or strengthen their own areas of research.

 

CEP/TE 915: Literacy in Sociocultural Context
Mondays, 9:10-Noon, Biochemistry 111
Instructor: Dr. Susan Florio-Ruane (susanfr@msu.edu)

NOTE: This course is part of the Literacy Specialization.

CEP/TE 915 examines literacy—its teaching, learning, and practice—in social and cultural context. Course topics include: Research on language, literacy and learning in context; Power, literacy, and identity in education; Curriculum and the negotiated nature of literacy teaching/learning; Literacy and its development as cultural communication. These topics are studied by means of (1) close reading and discussion of selected texts, (2) class members’ scholarly writing, and (3) the development and presentation of collaborative “issue forums” oriented to class members’ interests. We will explore ideas about literacy and learning from the perspective of key disciplines that have significantly impacted education in the 20-21C (anthropology, philosophy of education, cultural psychology, and sociolinguistics). By reading, writing, and speaking about selected works from scholars in these disciplines (e.g. Dewey, Geertz, Cole, Lave & Wenger, Gee, Bruner, Smagorinsky & Lee), and also by further investigating research and scholarship collaboratively in student-led Issue Forum groups, we will trace the emergence --and develop an understanding—of sociocultural perspectives on literacy and their relevance to contemporary educational theory, research, and practice. This course is open to PhD students in the College of Education Literacy Area of Specialization as well as doctoral students in other programs and departments (e.g. CEPSE, TE, WRAC, ELL/ESL, and English Education). There are no prerequisites for doctoral students, and instructor consent is not required.

 

TE 917: Contemporary Theories and Discourses
Mondays, 6:00-8:50 p.m., Ernst Bessey Hall 305
Instructor: Dr. Kyle Greenwalt

This course is meant to give students a chance to read seminal texts in contemporary social theory, and to imagine their application to issues and themes within education. So as to promote depth of reading and thought, whole books will be read, and over a series of weeks. The course syllabus will be co-created, with an eye to the interests and needs of students, as well as the areas of expertise of the instructor.

Texts likely to be read include:

  • Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, Part II
  • Jacques Derrida, The Grammatology and Writing and Difference
  • Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman
  • Jacques Lacan, Ecrits
  • Mikhail Bakhtin, Discourse in the Novel
  • Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus
  • Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization
  • Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible

Seminar time will be devoted to attempts to make collective sense of what can be very difficult texts, and to imagine how such texts might be used to ask questions of educational research and practice in their current forms. Assessment will be devoted to both critical interpretations of course readings, as well as the attempt to write for an external audience in ways they might find meaningful (teachers unions, educational policy makers, parent coalitions, etc.).

 

TE 919: Policy Analysis in Education
Wednesdays, 4:10-7:00 p.m., Berkey Hall 108
Instructor: Dr. Teresa Tatto

This course will explore the conception, generation, and analysis of educational policies using current examples of policy analysis to illustrate this process. The course will pay particular attention to the contexts of policy including novel and evolving concepts of global and local systems of governance. The course will also explore the uses, limitations, and ethics of policy analysis.

The overall goal for the course is to enable doctoral students to design policy analysis in their area of interest using examples of current research (their own or other) as a shared context for learning. Many students use this course to begin to develop literature reviews or to design the papers they will need to fulfill their doctoral program requirements including dissertations. Students will also be encouraged to craft their course project for possible presentation in conferences such as AERA and CIES and for publication as an article or a chapter in a book.

The course is open to new and more experienced doctoral students across all areas in the college and in other colleges. Knowledge of qualitative and quantitative research methods and analysis is not required. This course is specifically designed to help doctoral students interested in education at all levels acquire the skills and abilities that are required to design sound and responsive policy analysis. This course counts toward the doctoral requirement for courses that contribute to increasing the depth and breadth of understanding of educational issues within a qualitative or quantitative research methods framework.

 

TE 921: Learning to Teach
Mondays, 4:10-7:00 p.m., Wells Hall B104
Instructor: Dr. Alicia C. Alonzo

This course will provide an orientation to a number of issues and perspectives surrounding the process of learning to teach. Given the often contentious debates surrounding teacher education (in the United States and countries around the world), these issues have heightened importance in the current climate. The questions that we will explore in this course underlie both current (and future) policies and teacher educators’ responses to those policies.

In particular, we will consider the following questions (often from multiple perspectives):

  • What knowledge and skills should teachers learn during pre-service education?
  • Should pre-service education attempt to change teachers’ professional identities and/or beliefs? If so, how?
  • How can pre-service education prepare teachers to learn throughout their careers?
  • What are affordances and constraints of different approaches to teacher education?

By “pre-service teacher education,” I mean the education that teachers receive (through a variety of different routes) prior to being fully certified. While learning to teach is a process that occurs throughout a teacher’s career, given the focus of other CITE courses (i.e., TE971), we will concentrate most of our effort on pre-service teacher education. However, in doing so, we will contextualize our consideration of pre-service teacher education in light of a continuum of teacher learning.

CEP/TE 930L: Educational Inquiry (Language and Literacy Focus)
Mondays, 12:40-3:30 p.m., Erickson Hall 224
Instructor: Dr. Tanya Wright

NOTE: This course is part of the Literacy Specialization.

This doctoral course provides an introduction to educational research, particularly in literacy education. Primary objectives for students in the course are to learn:

  • different purposes for educational research
  • about a range of different designs and methodologies used in literacy research, including:
  • what the design or methodology is,
  • some history of its use in literacy research,
  • kinds of questions that can be addressed and claims that can be made using that design or methodology; and
  • some standards of quality for research of that design or methodology;
  • some key concepts in educational research, including validity, reliability, inference, and generalizability;
  • about responsible conduct of research (research ethics);
  • how to more effectively critique research; and
  • how to match research questions to methodology

This course is intended for first or second year doctoral students with interests in language and/or literacy education. Note. Students do not have to be completing a Literacy Concentration to take this course. Students will have the opportunity to consider a topic of their choice from a range of methodological perspectives.

TE 931: Introduction to Qualitative Methods in Educational Research
Mondays, 12:40-3:30 p.m., Erickson Hall 226
Instructor: Dr. Angela Calabrese Barton

This course will provide an overview of qualitative methods and methodologies in educational research and other fields. Focusing primarily on interpretive and critically oriented theoretical orientations to qualitative research, we will read about and discuss different approaches to qualitative research, examine qualitative research studies, and engage in qualitative research. After exploring the characteristics of qualitative research, the course will investigate different approaches: ethnography, case study, action and participatory research, phenomenological inquiry, and narrative research. We will also be building a “toolkit” of qualitative methods and skills that will enhance your ability to: design qualitative research projects, conduct participant-observation and interviews, keep fieldnotes, undergo human subjects review, code, write proposals, “write up”, and evaluate qualitative research. Questions of epistemology, positionality, reflexivity, purpose, and ethics will be considered throughout the course.

Our central goals are

  • to enable you to become a critical reader of qualitative research;
  • to assist you in developing an understanding of the purposes, tools, assumptions, and limitations of qualitative research; and
  • to prepare you for further study and engagement in qualitative research.

TE 936: Topics in Research on Teaching and Learning Science: Learning Progressions in Science
Wednesdays, 12:40-3:30 p.m., ROOM
Instructor: Dr. Amelia Gotwals

NOTE: This course is part of the Science Education Specialization.

This course fulfills a requirement for the Graduate Certificate in Science Education. In this course, we will explore the ways in which learning progressions (“descriptions of the successively more sophisticated ways of thinking about a topic that can follow one another as children learn about and investigate a topic over a broad span of time” (NRC, 2007, p. 214)) are defined for various purposes and explore the impact that learning progressions are having on multiple aspects of science education. For example, A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts and Core Ideas (NRC, 2011) stresses the importance of thinking about the progression that students take as they develop more sophisticated understandings in science. In addition to informing standards, learning progressions have been used as a guide in designing curricula (e.g., Songer, Kelcey & Gotwals, 2009; Wiser, Smith & Doubler, 2012), professional development (Furtak, Thompson, Braaten & Windschitl, 2012), large-scale assessment (Alonzo, Anderson & Neidorf, 2012), and classroom assessment (Alonzo, 2011).

This course is intended to provide both an introduction to the broad work that is being conducted using learning progressions as well as provide an opportunity for students to: (1) design tools based on a learning progression; (2) design a hypothetical learning progression; (3) gather validity evidence about a learning progression; or (4) explore the characteristics of learning progressions that can be useful for a specific purpose. The course will include guest speakers who are conducting work on learning progressions (both within and external to MSU). This course will be useful to all science education graduate students and those interested in how learning progressions are being used across the educational system.

TE 939: Special Topics in Advanced Qualitative Methods: Critical Ethnography: Exploring Postmodern, Poststructural, Postcolonial, and Feminist Approaches to Qualitative Research
Tuesdays, 4:10-7:00 p.m., Wells Hall C210
Instructor: Dr. Avner Segall

Since the last part of the 20th century, a variety of critical discourses--postmodernism, poststructuralism, poststructuralism, feminism, queer theory, and race based theories, to name a few--have troubled the adherence of positivist notions of research to objectivity, Truth, and value-free science, where data is assumed to be neutrally and naturally collected, interpreted, and textualized by disinterested researchers. Rather than attempting to provide an objective, "tidy" text about what is inherently an untidy, fractured world, these critical discourses suggest that research ought to be considered a problematized and contested terrain depicting a double crisis of representation and legitimation.

This course will explore the origins, nature, and implications of this double crisis of representation and legitimation and what it might mean and entail for doing critical qualitative research in the 21st-century. Combining a theoretical and practical approach to the study of qualitative methodology as always already political--that is, as always positioned somewhere and as always advocating something--this course will help students learn to attend to the ethics and politics of what we do and do not do as researchers and the various epistemologies, assumptions, and values underlying our practices as well as their consequences for our own research, for our participants, and for the world we attempt to depict conceptually and/or empirically. At the core of this class, and as we explore issues of power, ethics, positionality, voice, authorship, and praxis as well as "play" with alternative forms of textuality that are more representatives of our current polyvocal world, is the attempt to help students reconcile the relationship among issues of epistemology, ontology, and methodology--ensuring the first two correspond with one's "methods" to produce a meaningful methodology--both in students' own current doctoral work and beyond.

TE 962: Teachers and Teaching in Urban Contexts
Wednesdays, 4:10-7:00 p.m., Ernst Bessey Hall 304
Instructor: Dr. Terry Fleannaugh

NOTE: This course is part of the Urban Specialization

This doctoral seminar is designed to explore how individuals participating in the profession of teaching in “urban” communities have responded over time to ever-changing definitions of school “success” and “failure” in the United States. The term urban, within the context of this seminar, is meant to represent communities who have been historically disenfranchised and traditionally marginalized by systems of inequality based primarily on race, ethnicity, culture, gender, social class, language, and disability that will comprise the vast majority of students least likely to receive the types of educational resources enjoyed by peers who belong to dominant groups. Given this context, teachers in these spaces play immensely important roles in both the perpetuation of highly problematic frameworks of teaching and learning in urban communities, in addition to the dissemination of potentially liberating pedagogies among communities most affected by systemic discrimination. What have been some of the historical antecedents that have impacted the way teachers approach their jobs in these contexts? What are some of the prevailing values that either improve or hinder the act of teaching students from urban communities? What are some of promising frameworks and practices that effective teachers in these contexts employ to combat systemic inequity?

Emphasizing the socio-historical and political-economic dimensions of schooling, we will explore the role of teachers in shaping the academic “success” and “failure” of students in urban contexts through thorough analysis of theories and studies in multiple areas. Doctoral students in this seminar will be required to complete a mini-project that builds on some of the theoretical or practical components covered throughout the semester. This course is ideal for doctoral students interested in Urban Education, Curriculum, Critical Studies, and related fields that examine the implications of a critical pedagogy in post-industrial urban classrooms.

TE 975: Policy Perspectives on Teaching and Teacher Education
Thursdays, 4:10-7:00 p.m., room to be announced
Instructor: Dr. Suzanne M Wilson

Still sorting through all this brouhaha about teacher education and teacher quality? Still unclear about what your position is? As most of you know, teacher education and teacher quality are topics of enormous concern in contemporary debates about education. Having explored some of these issues in Proseminar II (TE 902), this course will be designed to map out the contemporary stakeholders and organizations, as well as their positions. Students will take responsibility for gathering research and other documentation concerning a particular group/actor and becoming expert in that group’s history, mission, activities, and position. Each small group will write a paper describing and explaining that stakeholder. The class as a whole will read several theories that might help organize the “big picture” and each student will write a 15 page research proposal (modeled on the NSF proposal process) to investigate policy on teaching/teacher quality/teacher education. The course is writing and discussion intensive, and all students will be expected to be proactive in helping us gather up relevant data and readings so as to inform our understanding of the current landscape.

CEP/TE 980: Writing, Research, and Theory
Date and time to be announced
Instructor: Dr. Gary Troia

Note: This course is part of the Literacy specialization

TE 991: Religion, Schooling, and Pedagogy
Wednesdays, 12:40pm-3:30 p.m., Holden Hall G011
Instructor: Dr. Mary Juzwik

The course is for doctoral students in education, religious studies, and related fields who would like to deepen their acquaintance with issues at the intersection of religious faith, schooling, and pedagogy. In addition to studying those issues from a historical perspective, we will also examine contemporary questions related to religious faith, schooling, and pedagogy. We will explore policy questions, for example about state and federal regulation of homeschooling; pedagogical questions, for example about the relations between religious faith and classroom dialogue across subject areas; and conceptual questions, such as whether and how religious faith fits within a broader framework of multiculturalism. Required and recommended reading will include scholarship in education, history, political science, moral and political philosophy, anthropology, and religious studies. We will read such scholars as Peshkin, Tyack, Cuban, Hansot, Kunzman, Chaves, Fraser, Moore, Apple, Foster, Bielo, Stambach, Sarroub, Brighouse, Feinberg, Brockman, and Appiah. While some scholars will focus on the American context(s) in which relations among faith, schooling, and pedagogy play out, we will also explore international and global perspectives. Writing skills honed in course will include reviewing and synthesizing scholarly literature in the field. For example, we will identify and practice strategies for “situating” an inquiry in “the field.” Major written assignments will include a book review and a literature review or a conceptual essay. If desired, students will have an opportunity to involve themselves in collaborative writing with the instructor.

TE 991: Assessment and Accountability
Wednesdays, 4:10-7:00 p.m., Ernst Bessey Hall 106
Instructors: Dr. Alicia Alonzo and Dr. Rebecca Jacobsen

DO THESE HEADLINES MAKE YOU CRAZY?

Hard-Working Teachers, Sabotaged When Student Test Scores Slip

Duncan Says 82 Percent of America's Schools Could "Fail" Under NCLB This Year

WANT TO UNDERSTAND WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON?

Traditionally, in education, accountability and assessment were only loosely connected. While assessment and accountability have always existed in education, they have only recently become linked. No Child Left Behind legislated that schools be held accountable for student achievement on standardized assessments. More recently, some cities and districts have used standardized assessments to hold individual teachers accountable for student performance. Through this course, we will examine the past, present and future relationship between assessment and accountability. We will begin the course by considering the origins of both assessment and accountability. Then we will spend time exploring the current climate and the particular way that assessments are now used to hold schools and individual teachers accountable for student academic performance. Finally we will consider alternative examples from both the US and other countries to reimagine the role of assessment in an education accountability system.

  • COURSE THEME 1: Contextualizing current climate – How did assessment and accountability become linked in the US education system?
  • COURSE THEME 2: Assessment and accountability today – What’s the relationship between assessment and accountability in the US education system currently?
  • COURSE THEME 3: Reimagining the place of assessment in an accountability system – Should assessments be part of an education accountability system? If so, what is their role? What types of assessments should be included in an accountability system? What else should be included?

TE 991: Investigating Youth Language and Literacy in Schools and Communities
Mondays, 4:10-7:00 p.m., room to be announced
Instructor: Dr. Django Paris

This graduate seminar is designed to explore the educational implications and applications of youth language and literacy as it is practiced in the daily lives of urban (and, less so, suburban and rural) teens. Many believe that young people in urban schools are not reading and writing—that they come to our classrooms with little interest in literature or essays. Many also believe that the spoken language of our youth is simply full of slang and vulgarity, or that languages other than English get in the way. And if you believe that test scores are a reasonable measure of these claims, they seem fairly valid. Urban youth, particularly African Americans, Latino/as, Indigenous Americans and other youth living in poor communities, are failed in large numbers by tests assessing their school language and literacy skills. And yet writing and reading are staples of social interaction in contemporary youth communities. Text messages fly across youth space; rap lyrics are written, consumed, and performed; relationships are negotiated through literacy across social networking sites; graffiti is tagged, interpreted, and covered up; old school print notes circulate the classroom… And oral language (e.g., Englishes, Spanish, Navajo), too, is used by young people to position themselves as members of particular communities inside and outside school. These oral and literate practices are closely tied to constructions of identity, ethnicity, race, gender, class, sexuality, place and, more generally, to positions of relative power between youth and dominant institutions (like school). In this class we will look to understand language and literacy as it is practiced by youth within and across difference and (in)equality and we will seek ways to use such practices as resources to improve the educational experiences of our young people.

We will read studies in youth language and literacy, explore ethnographic and social language methods used in these studies, and conduct some research exercises with youth inside or outside school. Each student will complete a small qualitative research project on some aspect of youth language and literacy. This small project may be completed solely for the class or may be part of a larger, ongoing research project. Readings will range from classic to contemporary studies, from theory to methodology. All of our readings will address fundamental questions about why and how youth use language and literacy and why and how educators use such practices as resources for classroom learning. The small research project will give students the opportunity to investigate youth practices in an area of particular interest.

MTHE 927: Proseminar in Mathematics Education
Thursdays, 3:00-5:50, 212 N Kedzie Hall
Instructor: Dr. Michael Steele

MTHE 927 is designed to introduce you to the scholarly discipline of mathematics education and help you begin the process of becoming a researcher and scholar of mathematics education. The proseminar serves as a required starting point for doctoral study and is built around the following objectives:

  • Introduce the central themes, concepts, and paradigms of research in mathematics education, along with its history and achievements.
  • Develop your scholarly literacy—the skills and abilities for participating in the community of scholars in mathematics education.
  • Support the development of your individual research interests within mathematics education. The focus of any doctoral program is to develop the focus and abilities to conduct innovative research. This process begins in the proseminar.
  • Create a community of learners and scholars. Much of your learning will take place away from class in interactions with your fellow students and faculty members.
  • Facilitate your participation in the community of mathematics education researchers and scholars, at MSU and in the broader community.


MTHE 927 will focus on four domains of work in mathematics education and education: learning, teaching, assessment, and policy. (MTHE 926, the other half of the proseminar, focuses on curriculum, discourse, equity and teacher education.) We will also focus on specific academic skills and literacies (e.g., primary and secondary sources, genres of academic writing, familiarity with math ed journals and conferences), as well as programmatic aspects of the Mathematics Education doctoral program. Although MTHE 926 and 927 are designed primarily for students in the Mathematics Education Ph.D. program, other doctoral students with an interest in mathematics education may find the courses useful and are welcomed as part of the MSU mathematics education community.