Course Description:  Foundations of Education  

Foundations of  Education (EPS 201) seeks to engage students in a critical, interdisciplinary analysis of the relationship between school and society. The EPS 201 course examines the foundations of American education from the early nineteenth century to the present. EPS 201 seeks to equip students to make informed judgments about policies and practices in schools. It considers some of the challenges of: formulating and justifying aims and policies in American education; organizing the social context of the public school system; designing and systematizing the curriculum; and organizing teaching-learning processes. These tasks are examined by perspectives provided through: History; Sociology; Social Philosophy; and Philosophy of Education. The central questions explored throughout this foundations course are:  What should be the purposes of public education?      Who should be educated and how?  What essential knowledge and values should each student learn in school?  Who should control the curriculum?  What are the goals of social foundations? The goals of social foundations are to provide: “interpretive, normative, and critical perspectives within education that rely on the resources and methodologies of humanities, particularly history and philosophy, and the social and behavioral sciences. Its primary objectives are to sharpen students’ abilities to examine and explain educational proposals, arrangements, and practices, and to develop a disciplined sense of policy-oriented educational responsibility. “If foundations instruction is to have a genuine impact on teachers’ meaning construction in professional practice, the students must be engaged in forming and articulating meaning for themselves in their social foundations coursework” (Steven Tozer, 1993).

Term: Summer 2013

Delivery Method: Online

Dates: Jun 10, 2013–Aug 1, 2013

Meeting Time:Tues7:00 PM–9:00 PM