Courses

UED 70001 Colloquium, W 6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. Mangual Figueroa Open to UED Students Only (fully in-person)

UED 70200 Historical Contexts in Urban Education, T 4:15 p.m. - 6:15 p.m. Rogers Open to UED Only (fully in-person)

UED 70400 Urban Pedagogy in the Urban Classroom, W 4:15 p.m. - 6:15 p.m. Deckman Open to UED Students Only (fully in-person)

UED 74100 Quantitative Methods, T 4:15 p.m. - 6:15 p.m. Battle (fully in-person)

UED 72100 Global Perspectives in Critical Childhood Studies T 4:15 p.m. - 6:15 p.m. Luttrell (fully in-person)
What do we mean by “childhood” and “adolescence” and what is at stake in these definitions? This course examines the conceptual framework of critical childhood studies and its intersection with feminist theories, critical race theory, disability studies and queer theory. We will examine how different institutions, discourses and systems shape how childhood is experienced: including family, school, the juvenile (in) justice system, media and consumer culture. We will consider changing concepts of childhood and adolescence from a variety of cultures and in different historical periods, acknowledging how shifting—and often contradictory—conceptions of childhood both align and clash with the way children actually live. Using early childhood education discourse as one focal point, students consider and re-imagine processes of socialization and child development. Rather than characterizing children as “incomplete” en route to becoming adults and as objects rather than subjects of adult socialization, the course features what young people do, how they live their lives and imagine their futures in a variety of global contexts. Finally, we will consider methodological and pedagogical strategies used by various researchers and practitioners working with rather than on or about children.

UED 71100 Schooling and Education within the Black Imagination, W 4:15 p.m. - 6:15 p.m. Smith (Hybrid)The legacy of schooling and education for Black Americans has transformed how we conceptualize teaching and learning.  It has also exposed how Black people have been excluded from traditional educational institutions and the powerful ways Black people have disrupted marginalization and disenfranchisement.  This course explores the education and schooling of Black Americans through an interdisciplinary lens. The course begins with an examination of the early efforts taken in educating Black Americans during slavery, the period right after Emancipation, and throughout Reconstruction.  The second portion of the course investigates political movements that coincide with the Black American educational imagination.  Using case studies that focus on Brown v. Board of Education, The Mississippi Freedom Schools, and the Ocean-Hill Brownsville movement, students will probe the intersections between politics and education.  The course then moves to feature Black cultural ethos.  Literature and case studies that elucidate the work of culturally relevant pedagogies and African-centered schools will be employed to understand the indelible ways Black culture can be a channel to foster knowledge.  The final theme of the course examines Black excellence in higher education.  Here, the focus accentuates Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and their role in educating generations of Black students.  HBCUs provide a critical case study in history, politics, and culture.  The overall aim of the course is to, by employing a variety of texts and mediums, examine the ways Black people have maintained a steadfast yet creative commitment to education and schooling.

UED 75200 Scholarly Communication with Public Audiences, M 4:15 p.m. - 6:15 p.m. Bloomfield (fully in-person)
Public scholarship translates research findings, policy analyses and theoretical perspectives into terms understandable to non-experts while maintaining content integrity. This course will explore abounding opportunities and obligations for public scholarship while helping to improve students’ ability to participate in multiple contexts including popularly-directed books, articles, op-eds and columns, print and broadcast interviews and press comments, expert testimony, and social media. Course work will emphasize student projects and workshop-style peer review.

UED 71100 The University in Crisis: Contemporary Debates in Higher Education Research, H 6:30 p.m. –8:30 p.m. Chet Jordan (Hybrid)
The 21st century in American higher education has been consumed by simultaneous, intersecting crises, beginning with the global financial collapse. Since that time, colleges and universities across the country have grappled with racism and racist violence, weathered the pummels of the pandemic, and are now in the crosshairs of a wide-range of political ideological battles, all of which are threatening the core foundations of academic freedom. This course will examine the past 20 years in higher education policy, drawing from a host of disciplines including sociology, social psychology, and political science to understand why contemporary higher education is under assault and how a critical evaluation of current systems and structures can restore confidence and trust in the institution. We will read across various media, including popular higher education news outlets (e.g. Inside Higher Education) and journals. Our discussions and focused readings will be supported early in the semester by a host of theorists, much of which will drawn from critical race theory and theories of capitalism and political economy. To complement our weekly seminars, we will hear from luminaries in the field, including from scholars at the Community College Research Center (CCRC), the CUNY Central Office, and presidents and provosts from across the country. The work for this course will be individualized depending on each participant’s area of interest. Doctoral students close to a dissertation in higher education will be asked to focus on a component of that project while all other participants prepare a term paper aimed at addressing an issue in higher education through an evaluation of current research. Participants should be ready to engage in a lively, weekly debate where all points of view are welcome.

UED 71200 Harlem: A History of Protest in the Schoolhouse, M 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Terri N. Watson (Hybrid)
Harlem is a historically Black neighborhood in New York City. It is home to several national landmarks including the Apollo Theater and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The influx of southern transplants, which began at the start of  World War I, gave birth to the Harlem Renaissance and was followed by the riot of 1935. The latter embodied Harlem’s anguish due to police brutality and racist policies and practices embedded in the city’s public schools, housing patterns, and employment opportunities. This course begins in 1935, with the appointment of New York City’s first Black woman principal: Gertrude Elise Ayer. Black feminism (Combahee River Collective, 1979) will be used to examine Harlem’s fight for equitable and socially just schools. Archival documents and commissioned reports along with select readings that center Harlem’s schools will be analyzed - including their limitations and contradictions. This seminar will provide students with ample opportunities to examine specific moments in Harlem’s history of protest in the schoolhouse to inform and advance their learning.​​

UED 70002 Participatory Action Research Collective, Maddy Fox (module, 1 credit) (fully in-person)
A co-created collective space for those working with/interested in youth-centered critical participatory action research. Together, we will explore readings, workshop each other's projects, and exchange ideas-in-action through play, art, writing, and whatever moves us. Facilitated by Maddy Fox.

UED 71100 Intersections between Immigration and Education, H 4:15 p.m. - 6:15 p.m. Mangual Figueroa
This class draws on contemporary interdisciplinary research from the social sciences to explore the intersections between immigration policy and educational practice in public schooling. In addition to reading current research from the fields of education, anthropology, and sociology, students will have an opportunity to learn methods for analyzing data related to the course topics. Students will work on the analysis of data collected as part of the City University of New York-Initiative on Immigration and Education (CUNY-IIE), a project which involves learning from educational stakeholders across K-12 settings in New York State. The data will include teacher surveys and qualitative focus group interviews with public school educators, students, and families. Members of the class will develop an analysis of the data that integrates their reading in the course with the goal of expanding our current theorizations of the relationships between immigration and education in the United States today.

UED 71100 Black America, T 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. Juan Battle and Allia Abdullah-Matta
This course will serve as a broad survey of the Black experience (mainly) within the United States. Because students will be exposed to (and contribute from) a wide variety of perspectives on the subject, this course is appropriate for students in the traditional social sciences (e.g. sociology, anthropology, psychology, urban education, and history) as well as more contemporary ones (e.g. women’s studies, race studies, American studies, cultural studies, lesbian and gay studies).

UED 72100 Developmental Psychology, T 4:15 p.m. - 6:15 p.m. Stetsenko
This course will provide knowledge on human development necessary for research in psychology, education, critical studies, sociology, and clinical practice. The course explores major theoretical approaches and paradigms in the field from a historical and critical perspective focusing on development as a dynamic, relational, embodied, and socioculturally situated process. We will work together to identify the central themes concerning human beings and human development – how we understand ourselves and the world – and critically explore them. Broad philosophical, sociopolitical, and value-oriented positions in seminal approaches regarding human nature, development, and mind will be discerned, discussed, and interrogated. New approaches and discoveries in research on human development – including diversity; development and learning; social interactions; cultural variations; and dis/abilities – will be addressed. 

UED  73100 Using Archives in Social Justice Research M, 11:45 a.m. – 1:45 p.m. Opotow (permission of instructor required)
Archives, research, and social justice is a course designed to develop students’ knowledge, skills, and strategies for using physical and digital archival material to study research questions of interest to them. Archives offer rich narrative, visual, & historical material and objects for understanding societal issues, activism, and collective efforts, lives lived in particular times and contexts, histories of groups and institutions, and justice-focused initiatives. The possible uses of archival data and material are boundless. We will visit archives and read deeply in the social sciences and humanities to sharpen students’ understanding of archives as a construct, as a rich empirical repository, and as a resource vulnerable to politicization. By the course's end, students will identify, design, and begin their own scholarly project utilizing archival material.

UED 70500 Educational Policy (Hybrid - Open to UED Students Only)
Prof. Edwin Mayorga 
Thursday, 4:15 p.m. - 6:15 p.m.

UED 70600 Introduction to Research in Urban Education (Hybrid - Open to UED Students Only)
Prof. Melissa Schieble 
Wednesday, 4:15 p.m. - 6:15 p.m. 

UED 75100 Qualitative (Asyn. Hybrid - Open to UED Students Only)
Prof. Wendy Luttrell
Thursday, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m. 

UED 71200 Harlem: A History of Protest in the Schoolhouse (Hybrid)
Prof. Terrie Watson
Monday, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. 

Harlem is a historically Black neighborhood in New York City. It is home to several national landmarks including the Apollo Theater and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The influx of southern transplants, which began at the start of World War I, gave birth to the Harlem Renaissance and was followed by the riot of 1935. The latter embodied Harlem’s anguish due to police brutality and racist policies and practices embedded in the city’s public schools, housing patterns, and employment opportunities. This course begins in 1935, with the appointment of New York City’s first Black woman principal: Gertrude Elise Ayer. Black feminism (Combahee River Collective, 1979) will be used to examine Harlem’s fight for equitable and socially just schools. Archival documents and commissioned reports along with select readings that center Harlem’s schools will be analyzed - including their limitations and contradictions. This seminar will provide students with ample opportunities to examine specific moments in Harlem’s history of protest in the schoolhouse to inform and advance their learning.​​

UED 71200 Radical Care: Teaching & Leading for Justice in Urban Schools (Hybrid)
Prof. Rivera McCutchen
Tuesday, 6:30 p.m. – 6:15 p.m.

As Critical Race Theory continues to come under attack from the highest levels of government, this course examines the application of CRT as a more humanistic approach to urban schooling, focusing specifically on critical conceptions of care, love, and hope. Beginning with the premise that schooling must be explicitly focused on disrupting structural inequality, we start with an examination of Black feminist/womanist approaches to schooling, then move on to other scholars whose work examines critical applications of care, love and hope in schools.

UED 72200 Dismantling Interlocking Systems of Oppression: A DisCrit Orientation to Multiply Marginalized Students (In person)
Prof. Jan Valle
Monday, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m. 

In this course, we will explore and apply DisCrit, a theoretical framework that combines tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Disability Studies (DS) as an analytical tool to interrogate interdependent constructions of race and disability in American culture writ large as well as public education. Through the lens of DisCrit, we will consider such questions as: How do racism and ableism circulate interdependently in ways that reify the construct of “normal”? What material and psychological consequences emerge from being labeled as raced and disabled? What mechanisms operate within educational laws and policies to oppress multiply marginalized students in neutralized and invisible ways? How does DisCrit inform our understanding of the persistent overrepresentation of students of color in segregated special education contexts? Course participants will have the opportunity to apply DisCrit to their individual research interests.

UED 73200 Activating Theories of Agency and Identity (Hybrid)
Prof. Jen Collett
Thursday, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. 

This course is designed to help students understand the intersection of theory and data analysis. Graduate students will learn to create data analysis tools of layered coding (Saldana, 2016), which are then situated in theoretical frameworks dominant in education to elucidate important findings across educational settings.  Students will analyze and deconstruct different theoretical approaches to understand how to create methodological tools to identify novel findings and conclusions.

UED 73200 Arts Based Research (In person)
Prof. Gene Fellner
Wednesdays, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m. 

In the past decade there has been an explosion of visual and arts-based research projects across several disciplines (e.g. anthropology, educational, public health, psychology, sociology). Arts-based research is an approach to inquiry, a methodology, which relies on artistic means to interrogate, reflect upon, and understand ideas, situations, relationships, experiences and structures. Like traditional research, arts-based inquiry seeks to raise awareness, broaden insight and understanding, and produce knowledge. Unlike traditional research, the value of arts-based research lies in its ability to evoke experience, celebrate nuance, validate feeling, promote reflexivity and generate empathy rather than in adherence to established research concepts of generalizability, replicability and “truth.” Ambiguity, complexity, polyphony and polysemy – the welcoming of multiple voices, meanings and perspectives – are friends of an arts-based methodology. Visual methods are also used to document phenomena and make visible patterns that might otherwise remain invisible.

In this course we will explore different visual arts-based methods of inquiry, including photography, drawing and painting, video and collage, paying particular attention to projects that are dedicated to building a better future for all and making our world more just. Visiting arts-based researchers will discuss their visual explorations, and a number of assigned readings will help us to theorize our own work and that of others. Central to this course will be your own visual inquiry into a subject that is of importance to you. Students may opt to analyze arts-based data that you have already gathered or to represent existing research findings in an alternative visual or multimedia form. Through discussion and analysis of your own work and that of visiting artist-researchers, students will develop conceptual and methodological skills to be applied in your own visual arts-based explorations. The course is organized around a commitment to joy, pleasure and playful experimentation as vital ingredients to arts-based research, analysis, and scholarship.

UED 73200 Engaging in Collaborative Research methods with Teachers, Children, and other Field-Based  Researchers (Hybrid) 
Prof. Beth Ferholt
Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. 

This course will support students as they develop their own means of collaborating with traditionally excluded knowledge, knowers, and means of knowing to develop new research methods.  Students will be invited to join existing studies in which young children, artists, and teachers work with researchers to design aesthetic, play-based research methods that are theoretically informed by the work of L. S. Vygotsky, a scholar of resistance, play, and art; or to design similarly situated, ethical, historical methods within their own ongoing or new research projects.  We will explore the work of researchers in a variety of fields who have engaged methods of research from outside the academy, such as methods of trance, art, and play, to make phenomena that may have previously appeared to be outside the purview of scientific study, available for study in their full, dynamic complexity.  The foci of the class will include challenging the divide between method and object in conventional social sciences, as well bridging barriers between theoretical traditions, professions, generations, and modes of existence in research design.

UED 75200 Advanced Research and Writing Seminar (Hybrid)
Prof. Kersha Smith 
Wednesday, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m. 

This course focuses on supporting advanced doctoral students who are doing research, analysis and writing as part of their second exam, thesis proposal or dissertation work. With instructor guidance, students will work in a structured, interpretive community over the course of the semester. In each meeting, you will read, comment on, and learn from each other’s work.  You will be given 8 writing assignments to develop your personal “writerly” practice, awareness and scholarly “voice.”  I will meet with each of you individually to set your final project goals for the semester and to map out three assignments that will be shared with your interpretive community during class time.  Finally, you will select one book about the writing process to read, for which you will write a “review” of the book. Each week one person’s work will be featured.  

PSC 73906 Participatory Democracy and Social Movements (In person)
Prof. Celina Su
Tuesday, 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. 

This seminar takes a look at what ordinary citizens do to shape public policies and engage in politics— in ways other than voting. We explore the notion that popular participation can make democratic governance more legitimate, fair, and effective. We examine theories and existing evidence on the promises and challenges of participatory democracy— alternatively called bottom-up participation, maximal democracy, or direct democracy. Specifically, we will examine forms and functions of civil society from a comparative perspective by looking at specific examples of (1) participatory institutions (neighborhood councils, urban budgeting, school governance, etc.), (2) participation in non-governmental organizations and development projects, and (3) social movements around the world (potential cases include landless people’s movements, transnational networks, mothers of political dissidents who have “disappeared,” AIDS protest groups, etc.). Sometimes, these three categories blur into one another. We will try to focus on case studies in “Global South” middle-income countries like Brazil, Argentina, India, and South Africa, though we also include domestic cases as a point of reference. How much should ordinary citizens participate in policymaking, and how? Under what circumstances?

Writing for Scholarly Publication (Hybrid)
Prof. Celina Su 
Tuesday, 4:15 p.m. - 6:15 p.m.

This seminar aims to help students to advance research projects and dissertations for publication, by drawing out data, analysis, and arguments for a journal article submission. Because of time constraints, we cannot also tackle book reviews, turning the dissertation into a book, etc. Because the academic job market has placed increasing pressure on doctoral candidates to publish journal articles foremost, we are strategically focusing on this goal. Over the course of the seminar, we will each employ standard protocols for journal article submission, and decide on whether and how we might want to take risks in our articles. We will pay special attention to issues of audience, clarity, and impact (what do we ultimately want folks to take away from our article?) throughout. We’ll be paying attention to the craft of good writing, to the specific constraints and vagaries of academic writing (especially journal article-writing), and to life conditions (accessing resources, making time, space, and the focusing power to write, as well as managing concurrent projects and simultaneously finishing a dissertation/ going on the job market) along the way. We will work on transforming our research into publishable articles, drafting, editing, and revising our work, and reflecting upon our work through peer review. In order to successfully complete this course, enrolled students must have completed a substantial portion of their fieldwork and analysis. By the end of the semester, each of us should have a journal article manuscript that is ready to submit. Interested students should email Celina Su (csu3@gc.cuny.edu) with a brief description of your current project/ proposed paper in advance.

SPAN 80000 Theorizing Language Across Disciplines (Hybrid)
Prof. José del Valle
Tuesday, 11:45 a.m. - 1:45 p.m

A cursory look at the language sciences reveals a heterogeneous object of intellectual inquiry, a diverse collection of uncanningly similar and diverging portraits. Even within Linguistics—only one among many disciplines devoted to understanding verbal interaction—we do encounter tensions—at times even hyperbolically referred to as “Linguistics Wars” (Harris 1993)—between apparently irreconcilable conceptualizations of language. Much more so if we dare cross the heavily guarded—yet inevitably porous—walls that separate the different realms of knowledge production. This seminar is designed as a daring commando raid across several of those borders; a suicidal mission, as it were, in search of (with Umberto Eco´s permission) the perfect language on language.

SPAN 80200, 48859, Critical Language Pedagogy (Hybrid)
Prof. Beatriz Lado
Thursday, 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. 

This course provides students with a solid foundation in critical applied linguistics and critical pedagogy in relation to the teaching of L2, L3, Ln, local, heritage, and world languages. The course includes a critical overview of language acquisition theories and teaching methods and reflects on where Critical Applied Linguistics and Critical Pedagogy stand within Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching.

Students will examine how language teaching and testing often reproduce ideologies, politics, social hierarchies and power dynamics, and will discuss classroom strategies to resist these practices, including developing critical linguistic awareness and antiracist pedagogies, gender-inclusive and feminist approaches, or the use of critical digital pedagogy in the classroom. An important part of the course will be devoted to creating teaching materials (syllabi, lesson plans, assessment tools) that help teachers and learners understand the socio-cultural, political, and ideological dimensions of language, and make them more sensitive to critical and social justice issues.

UED 70600  Introduction to Research Methods, T 630 - 830 P, hybrid, Ariana Mangual Figueroa (Urban Education Students Only)


UED 70500  Educational Policy, T 415 - 615P, hybrid, Heath Brown (Urban Education Students Only)
 

UED 73200  Doing Visual and Arts Based Research, M 630 - 830 P, in person, Gene Fellner

In the past decade there has been an explosion of visual and arts-based research projects across several disciplines (e.g. anthropology, educational, public health, psychology, sociology). Arts-based research is an approach to inquiry, a methodology, which relies on artistic means to interrogate, reflect upon, and understand ideas, situations, relationships, experiences and structures. Like traditional research, arts-based inquiry seeks to raise awareness, broaden insight and understanding, and produce knowledge. Unlike traditional research, the value of arts-based research lies in its ability to evoke experience, celebrate nuance, validate feeling, promote reflexivity and generate empathy rather than in adherence to established research concepts of generalizability, replicability and “truth.” Ambiguity, complexity, polyphony and polysemy – the welcoming of multiple voices, meanings and perspectives – are friends of an arts-based methodology. Visual methods are also used to document phenomena and make visible patterns that might otherwise remain invisible.

In this course we will explore different visual arts-based methods of inquiry, including photography, drawing and painting, video and collage, paying particular attention to projects that are dedicated to building a better future for all and making our world more just. Visiting arts-based researchers will discuss their visual explorations, and a number of assigned readings will help us to theorize our own work and that of others. Central to this course will be your own visual inquiry into a subject that is of importance to you. Students may opt to analyze arts-based data that you have already gathered or to represent existing research findings in an alternative visual or multimedia form. Through discussion and analysis of your own work and that of visiting artist-researchers, students will develop conceptual and methodological skills to be applied in your own visual arts-based explorations. The course is organized around a commitment to joy, pleasure and playful experimentation as vital ingredients to arts-based research, analysis, and scholarship.

UED 72200  Participatory Approaches to Public Ed Pol: Focus on District 15, H 630 - 830 P, in person, M. Fox

In this course, we will collectively study the history, present, and emerging possibilities in relation to educational policy-making in Brooklyn’s District 15. Brooklyn’s District 15 is home to staggering disparities in terms of resources, wealth, and racial segregation. As a result, and as is no surprise, there is significant, yet normalized, educational inequity across the District. In recent years, District 15 has experimented with approaches to disrupt some of those inequities. Most recently, the District is using a critical participatory action research approach to elementary ed policy-making in relation to rezoning and district planning.

In this course, we use District 15 as a case study in order to think collectively about educational equity, centering impacted communities, and participatory public policy-making. We will consider the distant and recent histories of rezonings, admissions, and other relevant policies in the District. We will analyze relevant district and city-level data, consider intersecting public policy sectors (like housing, policing, immigration) and we will interrogate concepts of “integration” “segregation” “equity” and “justice” as well as “participation”, “community control”, and “community engagement” through a participatory action research framework. Finally, we will consider implications beyond District 15, beyond Brooklyn, and beyond New York City and as relates to intersecting policy areas and issues.

This course aligns with two active participatory action research projects underway in District 15: in Sunset Park and in Red Hook/Gowanus/Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill. Students in this course will have the opportunity to meet with/work with community researchers from those projects as part of the course work for this course.

(Course would pair well with Community Based Research Methods, taught by María Elena Torre, which provides an introduction to PAR)

UED 75100  Qualitative Research, W 415 - 615 P, in person, Melissa Schieble

No Course Description

UED 72200  Dismantling Interlocking Systems of Oppression: A DisCrit Orientation to Multiply Marginalized Students, H 415 – 615P, in person, Jan Valle

In this course, we will explore and apply DisCrit, a theoretical framework that combines tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Disability Studies (DS) as an analytical tool to interrogate interdependent constructions of race and disability in American culture writ large as well as public education. Through the lens of DisCrit, we will consider such questions as: How do racism and ableism circulate interdependently in ways that reify the construct of “normal”? What material and psychological consequences emerge from being labeled as raced and disabled? What mechanisms operation within educational laws and policies to oppress multiply marginalized students in neutralized and invisible ways? Course participants will have the opportunity to apply DisCrit to their individual research interests.

UED 75200  Public Knowledge & Publishing: Queering Scholarly Dissemination, T 630 - 830 P, hybrid, Bishop

This course will provide an overview of routes to publication across a wide range of scholarly and public facing information environments. Spring 2022, the course will be (un)grounded in (anti)traditions of intersectional queer theory, querying the troubles of troubling academic publishing practices and forms of scholarly dissemination across (dis)embodied bodies of knowledge. The course will focus on writing for both popular and peer-reviewed publication and will provide an opportunity for enrolled students to submit their completed writing from this class for publication in a CUNY online journal Theory, Research and Action in Urban Education (TRAUE) https://traue.commons.gc.cuny.edu/ as well as drive the operations of the journal. Students will analyze their possibilities for publishing and determine steps to bring their scholarship into public spaces in the short, intermediate and long term. We will be joined this semester by a range of CUNY Graduate Center Urban Education alumni who will serve as guest editors for the next TRAUE special issue release in 2022 and who will lead the ongoing development of the editorial advisory board for the journal.

UED 71200  Creating Racially Just Schools, M 415 – 615P, hybrid, Terrie Watson

The disparate educational outcomes between Black and white children are long-standing and reflect the impact of race and racism on the nation’s public schools. Despite a range of efforts, including the landmark Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision and a host of federal mandates (e.g., the Every Student Succeeds Act) aimed to ensure equity and access for all students, race-based disparities remain evident in school discipline data, college readiness levels, and graduation rates. Nevertheless, African American educational leaders were found to have a profound impact on the academic success of Black children and in creating racially just schools.

This course focuses on the efficacy and advocacy of Frances (Fanny) Jackson Coppin, America’s first Black woman school principal. Using Black Feminism as a methodology, specifically the tenets of Black Feminist Theory (BFT) and motherwork (Collins, 2000, 1994), Coppin’s lived experiences and contributions to Black education will be examined to proffer valuable lessons to the next generation of school leaders.

Required Texts:
Collins, P. H. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York, NY: Routledge.
Coppin, F. J. (1913). Reminiscences of school life, and hints on teaching. Philadelphia, PA: A. M. E. Book Concern.

UED 72200  Agency and Social Transformation: Implications for development and Education with a Social Justice Agenda, W 415 - 615P, online, Anna Stetsenko

In this class we will explore and critically interrogate the concept of agency especially as it relates to the cultural, political, and historical contexts of education. We will discuss the uses of the concept of agency and its trajectories across various theoretical approaches, disciplines, and paradigms. A number of related issues and fields of agency will be addressed such as power, race, and gender. Close attention will be paid to the relationship of agency to identity development especially in the context of education. The need, possibility, and utility of agency for social transformation premised on ideals of social justice and anti-racism will be centered throughout the course, highlighting the interdisciplinary nature and practical relevance of agency. An additional emphasis is to be placed on how theorizing and research on agency might add to our understandings of diversity specifically in the context of the current acute socio-political crisis. The works by critical and decolonial scholars, including those from the Global South will be prioritized. The overarching goal is to provide the tools for participants to augment, develop, and advance their own views and positions on the concept of agency and social transformation as these relate to their research interests and agendas.

UED 71200  Testing and Assessment in K-16 and Teacher Education: Why are the stakes so high?, W 630 – 830P, in person, David Gerwin

This course examines the role that testing plays in education policy making and in the classroom, looking historically, sociologically and at policy (it does not provide a quantitative analysis of testing). Comparing assessment development in mathematics and “mathematical knowledge for teaching” with social studies and the difficulties in measuring “historical thinking” we will examine what testing can contribute to conceptual understanding in different academic disciplines.  The course considers the affordances and constraints of requiring a score for each student versus the national sampling provided by NAEP. The course will look at this question in a national context from the No Child Left Behind legislation. Taking NYS as a case study, the course examines the elimination of alternatives to the Regents examinations, their impact on graduation, and the recent introductions of alternatives to a fourth Regents examination; the NYS Performance Based Assessment Consortium; teacher certification examinations since 2004 will provide the final case study, including a close look the adoption and subsequent policies around the edTPA. In contrast, the course reviews the current political difficulty in attaining any accountability regarding the non-public education provided to 50,000+ yeshiva students around NYS. The yeshiva schooling issue poses a challenge to simply dismissing state accountability measures while also calling the state’s commitment to accountability into question. The course will include opportunities to participate in graduation panels for Performance Based Assessment, and guest speakers with expertise and differing viewpoints in the various case studies.

UED 73200  Cultural Praxis: Designing Research Methods in Partnership with Teachers, Children and other Field-Based Researchers, H 6:30 - 8:30P, in person, Beth Ferholt

This course will support students as they develop their own means of collaborating with traditionally excluded knowledge, knowers and means of knowing to develop new research methods.  Students will be invited to join existing studies in which young children, artists and teachers work with researchers to design aesthetic, play-based research methods that are theoretically informed by the work of L. S. Vygotsky, a scholar of resistance, play and art; or to design similarly situated, ethical, historical methods within their own ongoing or new research projects.  We will explore the work of researchers in a variety of fields who have engaged methods of research from outside the academy, such as methods of trance, art and play, to make phenomena that may have previously appeared to be outside the purview of scientific study, available for study in their full, dynamic complexity.  This work can be situated in the following areas, amongst others: a response to the “careless” academy (The Care Collective), ethnographic film (Jean Rouch), preschool practice (Monica Nilsson), developmental psychology (Anna Stetsenko), creativity in early childhood (Vea Vecchi), performance studies (Dwight Conquergood), Native Science (Douglas Medin and Megan Bang) and anthropology (Edith Turner).  The foci of the class will include challenging the divide between method and object in conventional social sciences, as well bridging barriers between professions and generations in research design.

UED 71200  Participatory Democracy and Social Movements, T 415 – 615P, Hybrid, Celina Su

This seminar takes a look at what ordinary citizens do to shape public policies and engage in politics— in ways other than voting. We explore the notion that popular participation can make democratic governance more legitimate, fair, and effective. We examine theories and existing evidence on the promises and challenges of participatory democracy— alternatively called bottom-up participation, maximal democracy, or direct democracy. Specifically, we will examine forms and functions of civil society from a comparative perspective by looking at specific examples of (1) participatory institutions (neighborhood councils, urban budgeting, school governance, etc.), (2) participation in non-governmental organizations and development projects, and (3) social movements around the world (potential cases include landless people’s movements, transnational networks, mothers of political dissidents who have “disappeared,” AIDS protest groups, etc.). Sometimes, these three categories blur into one another. We will try to focus on case studies in “Global South” middle-income countries like Brazil, Argentina, India, and South Africa, though we also include domestic cases as a point of reference. How much should ordinary citizens participate in policymaking, and how? Under what circumstances?

UED 72200  Critical Urbanisms and Just Cities: Reimagining Social Infrastructures and Politics from Below, T 2 - 4 PM, Hybrid, Celina Su

This seminar examines histories of spatialized inequities and case studies of current mobilizations for alternative futures and more just cities. What might alternatives to housing financialization and hypergentrification, pervasive segregation in schools and neighborhoods, and slow violence and environmental injustice look like? Drawing upon academic literatures in urban studies and planning, political science, critical geography, urban education, and other disciplines, we interrogate various social justice-oriented models and theories of urban planning and policy-making (including participatory, insurgent, pluriversal, and decolonial models), dissecting their implicit criteria and prescriptions for action. We do so by focusing primarily not on city administrations and official public policies, but on different forms of politics from below. Our readings include comparative and emergent case studies of community-driven attempts to create and sustain structures and spaces for sociability, care, and solidarities. These span from attempts at school community control and community land trusts, to rent strikes and environmental justice campaigns, to abolition and disability justice campaigns. We pay particular attention to how various social struggles are entangled (and try to grapple) with intersecting structures and axes of power, including but not limited to race, class, gender, sexuality, settler colonialism, and disabilities.

UED 72200  Critical Community Based Research, 1145-145P, hybrid, Maria Torre

Critical Community-based Research is designed as a theoretically rich research clinic, we will collectively wrestle with questions about the what/how/why of engaging as academics and people rooted in communities, in a praxis of justice-oriented research in communities, with unconventionally trained researchers. Together, we will think through the intertwined issues of history, theory, methods, and ethics of participatory community-based research in the context of our own research projects. You are encouraged to present your projects for in-depth discussions and feedback. Topics we will consider: Framing participation - Stakeholders and colleagues, MOUs and solidarity; Building research collectives; Conditions of collaboration - How is it that we can participate as equally as possible?; How do we 'work' power?; Ethics and the practice of participation, action, and research; Navigating Contradictions, Complexity & Ambiguity; Designing participatory methods, analyses and products.

UED 71200  Decolonizing Psychology, H 930 – 1130A, hybrid, Michelle Fine, Byrd

We begin with courage and humility, seeking to unpack critically the history of psychology and psychological constructs that have bled into urban education. social welfare, sociology.  We will, throughout the course, return to the question of how “decolonizing” may (or may not) be an intellectual, political and ethical project for our discipline; what remains of the psychological project when we interrogate and expose the eugenic, white supremacist, classist, heteronormative, pro-military and misogynist groundings of the discipline, and what transgressive possibilities have erupted – in teaching, practice, scholarship, arts and activism – from within the belly of the discipline, “whited out” by the hegemonic commitments of the profession. We will ground ourselves in the writings and commitments of decolonial theorists writing from South Africa, Martinique, Latin America, northern Africa, the United States and Maori scholars in New Zealand writing on extractive social science, the enduring tentacles of colonialism and white supremacy, the imperial reach of psychology as a discipline, the rich resonance of poetic knowledge and radical imagination:

“It appalls us that the West can desire, extract and claim ownership of our ways of knowing, our imagery, the things we create and produce, and then simultaneously reject the people who created and developed those ideas and seek to deny them further opportunities to be creators of their own culture and nations.” (Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 1999)

“Psychology, as a social science, has served the Western colonialist project in all its forms. Even as we have entered into a "post-colonial" period over the past century or more, the impacts of colonization on numerous populations around the world are still felt presently, profoundly so.” Sunil Bhatia, 2020, Internalized colonization and a decolonized psychology.

“Poetic knowledge is borne in the great silence of scientific knowledge.” Aimé Césaire, 1950

"Our radical imagination is a tool for decolonization, for reclaiming our right to shape our lived reality." (adrienne maree brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good)

“…one of the best ways of moving forward is to accept the splits within us and embrace them. Trying to go forward as if the damage has not been done is problematic, as it negates the bleeding wounds which many are still nursing..the persistent wound (of apartheid, colonialism and patriarchy) which many people continue to carry is a very sensitive one.” Puleng Seglo, 2020, Poison in the Marrow

Permission of Instructors

UED 73200  Childhood and Youth Studies: Approaches and Methods, T 415 - 615P, in person, Colette Daiute

This course "Childhood and Youth Studies: Approaches and Methods" involves in-depth focus on the interaction of problem, theory and method, with sustained attention to the ways in which researchers frame their investigations, develop research questions, design, implement, and report findings. Students engage with the contemporary study of children, childhood and adolescence as defined and supported in collectives of human cultural development (education, family, social welfare, community organizations, transnational child rights projects).  The course emphasizes sociocultural approaches to childhood/youth in field-based settings with young people growing up amidst contemporary challenges such as displacement, lack of access to economic and sociopolitical resources, and social exclusion. Methods addressed in this course, include ethnography/participant observation, activity-meaning system design, narrative analysis, conversation analysis, archival studies, surveys, and participatory-action research. The course uses an inductive approach to research methods, that is we examine research designs in the context of exemplary studies in interventions to address inequities in education, health, and social welfare. Course activities involve reading research articles, discussing articles orally and in writing with a focus on method, and applying the course readings and knowledge building to your own research interests.

UED 71200  Black Diasporic Visions: (De) Constructing Modes of Power, W 1145 - 145P, hybrid, Shedd, Evangelista

Black Diasporic Visions turns us toward a myriad of pathways for liberation formed by African people and people of African descent inside and outside of oppressive structures of power, as well as the development of alternative visions and spaces. More specifically, in this course, we consider these constructions which are often despite, within and at the intersections of institutions and systems that impact education, the prison industrial complex, food justice, public planning, preservation, legal personhood and climate change. It is our hope that the knowledge that grows out of Black Diasporic Visions may inform and continue to be informed by urgent interventions and creations today.

African people and people of African descent have always, envisioned, created. It is in part for the capture of innovation for profit, that early African civilizations were enslaved and African developments redirected. Let us read African and African descendant innovations and demands for being, with as much rigor as we read exploitation and oppression. In Black Diasporic Visions we consider how the tools of literary archaeology and magical realism inform how freedom dreams and provide possibilities for just existences and being seen. We examine what may be gleaned from the use of the ringshout by artist Common to honor the life of Freddie Grey, the Free Breakfast Programs organized by the Black Panther Party for educational reform, large statutes of African descendants by artists such as Simone Leigh and Kehinde Wiley that reclaim and redefine public space, community incorporation of solar panels and farming into educational programming in post hurricane Puerto Rico, embodied avatars as a means of survival as defined by Uri McMillan, and the call and response of #sayhername?

New technologies of expulsion and racial capital call for us to consider what it means to be in the wake, doing wake work, as described by Christina Sharpe. The range of constructions and visions reviewed in this course serve as correctives and prescriptives to the problems of omission and misrepresentation in academia, archives and society at large. Ultimately, Black Diasporic Visions, centralizes historically and globally informed liberatory possibilities, imperative to our lives today, that challenge divides between theory and practice.