[Mathmajors] New Course -- EDUC 310 (fwd)

[Brooke Miller]

Education 310 Spring Quarter of 2007 will consist of a critical inquiry into a 
deceptively simple question: why do some people do better than others in 
school?

We will approach this question from several perspectives. We have to unpack ?do 
better,? for starters. What are the various meanings of ?do better?? What are 
the various ways to measure doing ?better??

Moreover, doing ?better? implies difference. You get 100 on a test. I get 98 on 
a test. There?s a difference in our performance, but probably not one we will 
say really makes a difference. On the other hand, if we look at a series of 
test scores and find that just about all of the lower-class economically poor 
students score significantly lower than just about all of the higher-class 
wealthy students, than we might say that that?s a difference that does make a 
difference to us ? a difference that we find unacceptable. So we have to sort 
out, for each of us, differences that are acceptable, and differences that are 
not acceptable. Here we will focus on some of the major clumps of difference in 
terms of gender; social class; race and ethnicity, disability,among others.

Next, we will examine some of the major kinds of explanations that have been 
put forth by educators, sociologists, and other researchers in response to the 
?why do some people do better than others in school?? question and the notion 
of difference. Some of our readings will focus on perspectives of poverty and 
the culture of poverty; others on culture and socialization; still others on 
race and ethnicity and gender factors; still others on disabilities; still 
others on expectations.

The second half of the course will focus on the ways various educators have 
responded to the ?why do some people do better than others in school?? 
question. Guests as part of our critical inquiry will include two school 
superintendents, a veteran high school teacher, and university faculty and 
administrators who have worked closely with schools. There will be lots of 
give-and-take during each of these several presentation/discussion sessions.

(*Note to advisers: the following paragraph is tentative -- I 'm working on the 
logistics as we speak. If I can't get logistics worked out by Feb 16 I won't 
have students do school visits. It's a complicated business.)
*
Each course participant will visit a local school. Visits won?t be solo. You?ll 
be paired with one of the principal interns in the College of Education?s 
Danforth Educational Leadership Program. Visits will take place during a week 
in mid-May. We will develop in advance questions and topics to help us get a 
sense of what to look for during the visit. Visits will constitute one of our 
class sessions.


Grades will be based on short summary/reflection papers derived from the 
readings plus a summary/synthesis paper reflecting on the whole.

-- 
Roger Soder
Research Professor of Education
M213 Miller Hall    Box 353600
College of Education
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195
206.685.7458

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