OISE Courses
Course description same as APD5000H.
This course serves as the basic core course for the Institute's graduate studies concentration in comparative, international, and development education. It focuses upon the various theoretical conceptions of the socioeconomic development process and the role of formal and non-formal educational programs within that process. The basic purposes of the course are to introduce students to the comparative literature regarding education in advanced and developing nations, to evaluate the various ways in which comparative data may be used, and to examine the relative utility of various theoretical perspectives for understanding formal and non-formal educational policy problems common to many societies. CIDE students only or by permission of instructor.
Supervised experience in an organizational setting related to comparative, international, and development education, under the direction of a CIDE faculty and a professional mentor. The practicum will include not fewer than 40 hours of field placement over a period of one semester. There will be three assignments: 1) Development of a proposal that includes main learning goals, identification of a field site, and selection of a field based mentor; 2) Completion of the practicum itself (40 hours of on-sight work); 3) A final ''portfolio'' assignment that should include some combination of a short reflection paper on knowledge gained during the practicum, and evidence of any work completed during the practicum itself. The practicum is intended to provide students with practical experience and an opportunity to apply skills and knowledge gained from participation in the Comparative, International and Development Education Collaborative program. Arrangements for the practicum placement and selection of a CIDE supervisor are the responsibility of the individual student. The course will be open to students who have completed the core CIDE course, CIE1001H, and at least one other CIDE course.
A course designed to permit the study (in a formal class setting) of specific areas of comparative, international and development education not already covered in the courses listed for the current year.
The course aims to: (i) explore national and Transnational Perspectives on Democracy, Human Rights and Democratic Education in an Era of Globalization drawing on experience and scholarship; (ii) provide opportunities for in depth engagement both with leading scholars acting as faculty and with students from other universities; and (iii) build global professional networks among students and faculty.
Students are expected to: (i) engage with key concepts relevant to democratic education such as: democracy, citizenship, human rights, antiracism, discrimination, equalities; (ii) interrogate transnational research and scholarship on Transnational Perspectives on Democracy, Human Rights and Democratic Education in an Era of Globalization, using a variety of perspectives including sociology, political science and pedagogy; (iii) critically evaluate and compare different national and international approaches to democratic citizenship education; (iv) apply understandings of democracy and human rights to educational contexts; and (v) develop and implement policies and programs for democratic education.
Based on a seminar mode, each school of education will suggest a number of faculty/professor as guest speakers in the area broadly defined as Transnational Perspectives on Democracy, Human Rights and Democratic Education in an Era of Globalization. From the pool of the professors, the U of T course director and collaborating faculty from of the other two institutions will select 3 to 4 guest speakers for the course on each offering. This course will be offered on-line to ensure synchronous delivery and participation of students across three different time zones: Toronto, London and Melbourne, each of the 12 sessions will take 2 hours only without break. Each guest speaker will be offering a brief lecture up to 15 minutes highlighting key issues around the topic of their scholarship. The rest of the class will be based on various forms of critical dialog and discussion (individual, group and whole class active learning activities). The speakers will also provide 2 to 3 readings (one from their publications and two from other scholars' works), which will be distributed prior to the session and will be available on the online forum. Based on the primacy of dialogue, each topic/session is expected to ensure that the participants' personal knowledge, the readings, and the instructors' knowledge are brought into synthesized and integrated learning outcomes. Instructional variety (seminars, pair/group discussions, lectures, guest speakers, Video-recordings) and intellectual challenge are the key elements in the course's pedagogy. In addition, reflection, cooperative learning, inclusive classroom ethos, critical thinking, social skills development, a culture of encouragement, and reciprocal sharing and learning are a must for each session.
A course designed to permit the study (in a formal class setting) of specific areas of comparative, international and development education not already covered in the courses listed for the current year.
This seminar proposes to study, from a range of perspectives, Francophone minorities within local, national and international spaces. It will discuss the processes of minoritization and exclusion existing within and towards francophone minorities. The study of issues structuring the French-speaking space is an opportunity to bring to light the transformative processes that have taken shape, have been contested, and which have succeeded each other as debates have evolved over time and to identify the actors involved, their motivations, the context of their actions and the categories of classification that emerged from these debates. Similarly, the study of linguistic minorities has led to the exploration of a large number of theoretical concepts and advances stemming from various disciplines and traditions. This seminar will thus serve as a forum for examining how to achieve a better understanding of the issues facing linguistic minorities and to formulate new research questions by using various theoretical orientations and putting them to work.
This is the core required course for all students enrolled in the Collaborative Specialization: Education, Francophonies and Diversity.
This is a required course for master's students (and doctoral students who did not take it in their masters programs). The aim of this course is to apply theory and research to the study of curriculum and teaching. The course (a) provides a language for conceptualizing educational questions; (b) reviews the major themes in the literature; c) provides a framework for thinking about curriculum changes and change; and (d) assists students in developing critical and analytical skills appropriate to the scholarly discussion of curriculum and teaching problems.
In this course we will identify ways that systems of oppression and oppressive educational practices manifest themselves in school settings - for example, within interactions between teachers and students; administrators and students; students and students; students and the curriculum; teachers and the curriculum; administrators and teachers; teachers and parents; parents and administrators - and we will discuss how we can use these spaces or locate new ones to do anti-oppressive educational work in school settings. Emphasis in the course will be placed on integrating anti-oppressive educational theory with anti-oppressive educational practice. We will attempt to link our discussions of practice to theory and our discussions of theory to practice.
This course provides for practical experience of as well as understanding of innovative practices in cooperative learning (CL). We explore rationales for and current developments (synergy, shared leadership). Topics include: What is CL (principles, attributes); how to organize CL (structures and strategies); how does CL work (basic elements, types of groups); teacher and student roles; benefits (positive interdependence, individual accountability, social skills, cohesion); evaluation (forms and criteria); obstacles and problems; starting and applying CL in your classroom (teachers' practical knowledge; collegiality; parental involvement); independent learning and collaborative inquiry; Ministry and Board requirements; and resources and materials Group (response trios) projects and joint seminars.
Experiential learning for students new to qualitative inquiry is provided through a broad introduction to qualitative approaches from beginning to end. A range of approaches relating to students' theoretical frameworks are explored. Thesis students are encouraged to pilot their thesis research.
This course will examine the foundations of educational thought from the perspectives of Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Julia Kristeva, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jean Baudrillard. Educational implications and applications of poststructural philosophy will be stressed in relation to the discursive and non-discursive limits of the scene of teaching.
A critical review of current approaches to analysing teaching and an examination of theoretical literature on the concept of teaching. The course involves reflection on one's own teaching. Students should be currently teaching or have access to a teaching situation. This course is most suitable for primary and secondary teachers.
Reflective practice is one means through which practitioners make site-based decisions and through which they continue to learn in their professions. This course will critically examine the research and professional literature concerning the meaning of and the processes involved in reflective practice. Additionally, as professional development is often associated with reflective practice, the course will also identify and examine professional development strategies which could facilitate reflective professional development. Students will critique these models by utilizing the concepts from the reflective practice literature.
The literary text is used as a vehicle for reflection on issues of language and ethnic identity maintenance and for allowing students an opportunity to live vicariously in other ethnocultural worlds. The focus is on autobiographical narrative within diversity as a means to our understanding of the ''self'' in relation to the ''other''. The course examines the complex implications of understanding teacher development as autobiographical/biographical text. We then extend this epistemological investigation into more broadly conceived notions of meaning-making that incorporate aesthetic and moral dimensions within the multicultural/anti-racist/anti-bias teacher educational enterprise.
This course will focus on the dynamics of multiculturalism within the individual classroom and their implications for teacher development. It is intended to examine how teachers can prepare themselves in a more fundamental way to reflect on their underlying personal attitudes toward the multicultural micro-society of their classrooms. Discussions will be concerned with the interaction between personal life histories and the shaping of assumptions about the teaching-learning experience, especially in the multicultural context. The course will have a ''hands-on'' component, where students (whether practising teachers or teacher/researchers) will have the opportunity to become participant-observers and reflect upon issues of cultural and linguistic diversity within the classroom.
In this course we explore differences in the ways ''Knowledge'', ''Teaching'', and ''Learning'' are constructed and understood in different cultures, and how these affect how teachers learn and promote learning, with particular emphasis on multicultural settings. An underlying theme is how one can best bring together a) narrative, and b) comparative/structural ways of knowing in order to better understand teacher development in varying cultural/national contexts. The choice of particular nations/regions/cultures on which to focus in the course responds to the experience and interest of the students and the availability of useful literature regarding a particular geo-cultural area with respect to the basic themes of the course.
This course is organized around the various components of program planning and evaluation for education and the social and health sciences; needs, evaluability, process, implementation, outcome, impact, and efficiency assessments. Data collection methods such as the survey, focus group interview and observation are introduced.
Basic concepts, methods, and problems in educational research are considered: discovering the periodicals in one's field, steps in the research process, developing research questions, design of instruments, methods of data collection and analysis, interpreting results, and writing research reports.
This course studies methods of evaluating training. Topics covered by the course include training models, practice analysis, Kirkpatrick's 4 level training outcome evaluation model and its variants, Return on Investment (ROI) analysis, and measurement and design issues in training evaluation.
This course examines the concept of self-assessment and its relationship to learning and other psychological constructs, construction and validation of self-assessment measures, psychometric properties of self-assessment, how learners assess their learning, and how teachers and professionals in social and health services assess the quality and effects of their practices. The course emphasizes practice as well as theory and research. Some of the topics include methods of self-assessment; cognitive processes; psychometric issues and sources of bias in self-assessment; correlates of self-assessment; learner self-assessment and teacher or professional self-assessment.
Working within a broad discussion of methodology and the problems of theory and praxis particular to a 'global', postmodern, and neoliberal era, this course invites students to work through methodological dilemmas, choices and experiments within the context of their own research projects and in conversation with a variety of qualitative methodologists. Readings will propose critical, creative, and collaborative solutions to a range of contemporary qualitative methodology concerns in the field of education today. In particular, the problematics of gender and race, the impact of neoliberal politics on workers and learners, the tensions of local and global, the competing epistemologies of art and science, structural and post-structural, the ethical relations between researchers and research participants, the challenges of 'representation', the struggles over claims to truth are some of the subjects to be addressed in the discussion of research design and methodology.
This course explores inquiry as a methodological stance on practice, a framework for investigating and addressing critical issues in school, classroom, and community-based research. What Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2001; 2009) have theorized as an inquiry stance invites educators to regard educational projects as sites of knowledge generation, occurring within social, historical, cultural, and political contexts. With its emphasis on the intimate relationship between knowledge and practice, this concept foregrounds the role that practitioners can play—individually and collectively—in generating understandings, rich conceptualizations, in the service of enacting new educational possibilities. Taking an inquiry stance involves constructively problematizing conventional educational arrangements, interrogating how knowledge is constructed, evaluated and used in various settings, and re-imagining the roles practitioners might play in actualizing change in their work contexts.
Drawing on this notion of inquiry as stance, this course will explore what it means to be a practitioner researcher in educational institutions and community-based organizations. This course is intended for MA and PhD students interested in exploring the possibilities and the potential of developing new understandings and research within actual educational contexts that they shape daily. This may include a range of initiatives, from developing small-scale studies to inform ongoing practice to developing larger research projects, including practitioner inquiry dissertations. The course will pay particular attention to the conceptual and experiential frameworks that practitioners bring to site-based educational research. We will consider critical practitioner research in relation to other methodological approaches as well as educational conversations about the nature of research, with special consideration of how research might shape practice and inform policy and the potential contributions practitioners can make.
This course examines the linkages between education, both formal and non-formal, and the social development of nations, with particular focus on the process of educational policy formation for both developing nations and developing sub-areas within richer nations. The course aims to acquaint students with the main competing ''theories'' or conceptualizations of the development process and, through examination of a representative set of recent empirical studies and ''state of the art'' papers, to develop an understanding of the relationships between educational activities and programs and various aspects of social development, with an overall focus on problems of social inequality. The overarching objective is to help develop a better understanding of how, in confronting a particular educational policy problem, one's own theoretical preconceptions, data about the particular jurisdiction, and comparative data about the problem at hand interact to produce a policy judgment.