Curriculum and Degree Information
Find information about required and elective coursework to be completed during students' time at The Graduate Center.
Course of Study
All students in the Ph.D. Program in Urban Education will be required to complete four core courses:
- Historical Contexts of Urban Education
- Pedagogy and the Urban Classroom
- Introduction into Research Methods
- Educational Policy
In addition to the core courses, there is a required one-credit core colloquium seminar, that will be taken in the first semester.
The core courses are unified by two themes that run through them all: the interdependence of curricular and policy issues, and the connections between research methodologies and fundamental questions of knowledge, its nature and reliability. All courses address issues of cultural, historical, and political dimensions of inquiry.
By taking the core courses as cohort groups, students with diverse backgrounds and intended areas of interest will begin the process of collaborative inquiry that is central to the structure of this program. At every stage of their doctoral studies, students will learn to articulate their research questions, procedures, and outcomes with those of other students approaching related problems from different perspectives.
Students are also required to take 9 credits of courses related to methodology, one in quantitative research, one in qualitative research methods, and an advanced research methods course.
Electives fulfill 27 credits of coursework that advance students’ trajectories in their chosen research topic.
Core Course Descriptions
(3 credits; 30 hours plus conferences; 15-20 students per offering)
Course Description
The course examines research design and methods appropriate for studies in urban education. Ethical issues pertaining to the conduct of research are examined, including issues of informed consent involving research with human subjects. Also, the course examines theoretical research and research designed to test innovations in education as ends of a continuum in which the methods studied are appropriate for addressing questions/issues at multiple levels (e.g., macro, meso, micro levels of society). The theory and methods included in the course are: historical, philosophical, ethnographic, hermeneutic/phenomenological, narrative inquiry, participatory action research, discourse analysis, descriptive statistical, and inferential statistical (parametric and non parametric). Each of the research methods will be examined in terms of the underlying theory (i.e., logics), procedures associated with the methods, and ways in which each the methods has been applied in urban education. In relation to all of the methods studied in the course, the potential of mixed methods will be studied.
(3 credits; 30 hours plus conferences; 15-20 students per offering)
Course Description
This course examines the relationships through which knowledge is constructed and communicated in urban schools. It approaches pedagogy as a set of relationships among teachers and students mediated by culture, history, learning theories, assumptions about childhood and adulthood, and assumptions about knowledge and ignorance. Students will study pedagogical interactions in schools and the forms that knowledge assumes in the curriculum in discourse, activities, texts, materials, and technology. Students will also be asked to consider the ways that pedagogy is shaped by institutional culture and professional governance. Resources from cultural anthropology and comparative education will be studied to frame contemporary practice as particular versions of what is possible.
(3 credits; 30 hours plus conferences; 15-20 students per offering)
Course Description
This course will explore the emergence and transformation of urban educational institutions--public and private, inclusive and selective, fee-paying and free, religious and secular--out of the dynamic interplay of individual, group, and larger scale intellectual, social, political, and economic factors. Students will study the formation of social identities in the history of education, specifically race, class, gender, ethnicity, and religion, and the relationship of identify formation to current issues in education. The history of the politics of education also will be studied, especially as politics relates to defining educational mission, determining resources, including or excluding individuals and groups, providing equity of educational opportunity, and encouraging community participation in establishing and maintaining schools.
(3 credits; 30 hours plus conferences; 15-20 students per offering)
Course Description
This course will study educational policies and subsequent implementation as the intended and unintended consequences of many processes: ideological, social, judicial, scientific, political, and economic. Within the context of each issue, potential policy alternatives will be identified and actual policy and implementation decisions studied. Students will learn to use relevant concepts and methodologies from the social and behavioral sciences to analyze issues critically, including appropriate quantitative and qualitative methods. Case studies of real-world policies and practical outcomes will be studied to explicate within a specific temporal and political context complex urban educational problems.
In addition to the four core courses taken in the first year, a colloquium is required. The Colloquium is a one-credit seminar required of all students in the Urban Education Ph.D. Program. It is a very important part of the curriculum and helps to prepare students for the rest of their work in the program, including researching and writing a dissertation.
The Core Colloquium is designed to:
- Introduce students to the requirements and organization of the program, including opportunities for elective courses in other programs and the required program Examinations
- Introduce students to the faculty and their research interests
- Provide opportunities to reflect on the content of the core courses in relation to their own experience and across other courses
- Discuss the process of identifying a dissertation topic, finding a dissertation sponsor and committee, acquiring the research expertise to complete a dissertation, and planning the work of the dissertation itself
- Discuss current issues in urban education with faculty and invited speakers
Research Methods Courses
Research methods courses fulfill the required 9 credits. The program requires a 3-credit quantitative and 3-credit qualitative course, and students select a third (3-credit) methods course including (but not limited to) the following: research design, statistical reasoning and analyses, ethnographic methods and data analysis; visual and narrative research methods, document analysis, policy, historical, and philosophical analyses, among others.
Electives
Students will complete approximately 27 credits of elective courses, chosen from: recommended courses offered at The Graduate Center across its many doctoral programs; the program seminars and special topics courses in Urban Education; independent studies courses under the supervision of a member of the doctoral faculty (subject to approval of the Executive Officer); and, if appropriate, by courses that students can take at other universities belonging to the Inter-university Consortium. The electives feature analytical, empirical, theoretical and practice-based engagement in a student’s chosen field of study.
Electives are selected––in consultation with students' academic advisor and dissertation committee members. The electives that complete a students’ course of study and preparation for dissertation work are carefully and collaboratively curated by students and their advisors, who ensure that students achieve a high level of interdisciplinary sophistication related to their chosen research topic.
Program seminars focus on the ever-evolving issues/debates within the field, their historic antecedents and imagined possibilities. Program seminars help students develop theories of culture, language, race, gender, political economy, science, mathematics, curricular and policy analysis while linking higher education to cultural institutions, technology, and teacher education within the urban context.
- Countering the Carceral Continuum
- Troubling “Normal” in Education and Culture: Examining Disability through a Social Justice Perspective
- Shaping the City: Schools and the Racial Geography of New York
- What is Curriculum Studies?: Theories and Practices of Reconceptualization and Post-Reconceptualization
- Critical Sociocultural Theories and Transformative Practice: Intersections of Human Development and Education
- Exploring Connection between Disability, Imagination, and Creative Expression
- The Private War on Public Education
- Power, Discourse and Knowledge in Education: Postmodernist and postcolonial critical theory
- Raciolinguistics and Education
- The Hidden Curriculum of Gender and Sexuality in Schools: A Critical Race Theory Perspective
- Reimagining Youth Civic Engagement in the Digital Age
- Critical Lenses on Literacies: The Politics of Ideologies of Language and Literacies
- Emotions, Wellness and Sustainability: A Critical Exploration
- Educating Educators
- Mindfulness and STEM Education
Exams and Dissertation
The student is advanced to candidacy for the Ph.D. degree after completing:
Dissertation Oral Examination: The Ph.D. is awarded after the dissertation
See details: Exams and Dissertation Requirements.