Education

The Bryn Mawr/Haverford Education Department centers teaching and learning as fundamental to human life and growth, and intrinsically connected to struggles for understanding, liberation, and justice. With a primary focus on relationships, facilitation, and change as the heart of the study and practice of education, we address our students as past, current, and future stakeholders of public education systems, as participants in many other systems and structures, and as prospective teachers, school leaders, researchers, policy makers, activists, artists, and theorists. Defining teaching and learning as social, political, and cultural as well as personal activities, the Education Department challenges students to explore the relationships among schooling and other contexts of learning, human development, and social change as they gain knowledge and skills of educational theory and practice.

Consult the Student Guidebook and the FAQs for detailed information about declaring a major or a minor in Education Studies. Please note that Education courses are offered at both Bryn Mawr and Haverford every semester. Therefore, be sure to check course listings on both campuses as you are making your course selections.

Requirements for the Major and Minor in Education Studies

Students may complete a major or a minor in Education Studies. For students pursuing a major, specialization is required. Within the overarching frame of Research, Policy, and Practice, specialization options are Secondary Education, Secondary Education with Certification, Elementary Education, Higher Education, and Out-of-School Contexts. Alumnae may also complete the requirements for secondary teacher certification after they graduate through the Post-baccalaureate Teacher Education Program.

In the minor, students may choose between the minor in Education Studies and the minor in Education Studies leading to secondary teacher certification. In the minor, students can opt into a specialization within Education if it suits their goals.

Specialization Options

Five specializations are offered within the major. Students pursuing a minor may also choose to select a specialization. All five options entail studies of how knowledge, culture, language, and power interrelate and bear on teaching and learning across contexts. Within the overarching framework of Research, Policy, and Practice, the specialization options are:

Secondary Education
Secondary Education with Certification
Elementary Education
Higher Education
Out-of-School Contexts

Selecting a specialization affords students maximum agency in their study and application for their education degree. In addition to serving students who seek to pursue teaching routes, this selection offers options for those who seek to apply education in various ways in their studies and careers. See this document for a detailed description of the specialization areas.

Capstone Requirements

The Education Studies major and minor culminate with a 300-level capstone course to be completed during a student’s senior year and appropriate to a student’s chosen specialization. In each of these capstone courses, students will complete a portfolio. The following courses are designated as capstone options:

Capstone Course Options By Specialization

Secondary Education

(choose one)

EDUC B311: Theories of Change in Educational Institutions
EDUC B301 Curriculum and Pedagogy Seminar

Secondary Education with Certification

(all 3 courses required)

EDUC B301 Curriculum and Pedagogy Seminar
EDUC B302: Practice Teaching Seminar
EDUC B303 Practice Teaching in Secondary Schools

Elementary Education

(choose one)

EDUC B311: Theories of Change in Educational Institutions
EDUC B301 Curriculum and Pedagogy Seminar

Higher Education

(choose one)

EDUC B310 Redefining Educational Practice: Making Space for Learning in Higher Education
EDUC B302: Practice Teaching Seminar

Out-of-School Contexts

(choose one)

EDUC B310 Redefining Educational Practice: Making Space for Learning in Higher Education
EDUC B311: Theories of Change in Educational Institutions

See the Student Guidebook for detailed descriptions of the areas of specialization, requirements for the major and minor, and the process of applying.

In a five-year program, complete both the A.B./M.A. program in French, mathematics, physics, or possibly other departments that offer the AB/MA option and the secondary teaching certification program.

Alumnae may also complete the requirements for secondary teacher certification after they graduate through the Post-baccalaureate Teacher Education Program.

Students in the tri-college community may also apply as juniors or seniors to pursue an Accelerated Master's degree the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education in a range of programs.

Students interested in any of these options should meet with the Education Department Adviser (Margo Schall, mschall@brynmawr.edu) as early as possible for advice on scheduling, preferably by the sophomore year.

Requirements: Secondary Certification for Undergraduates & Post-bacs

The Bryn Mawr/Haverford Education Department is accredited by the state of Pennsylvania to prepare undergraduates and alumnae for certification in the following subject areas: English; languages, including French, Latin, and Spanish; mathematics; the sciences, including biology, chemistry, and physics; and social studies. Pursuit of certification in Chinese and Russian is also possible but subject to availability of student teaching placements. Students certified in a language have K-12 certification.

To qualify for a teaching certificate, students must complete an academic major in the subject area in which they seek certification (or, in the case of social studies, students must major in history, political science, economics, anthropology, psychology, sociology, or Growth and Structure of Cities and take courses outside their major in the other areas). Within their major, students must select courses that help them meet the state standards for teachers in that subject area. Students must also complete the secondary teacher certification track of the minor in education, taking these courses:

Course List
Code	Title	Units
EDUC B200	Community Learning Collaborative: Practicing Partnership	1
PSYC B203	Educational Psychology	1
EDUC B210	Perspectives on Special Education	1
EDUC B275	Emergent Multilingual Learners in U.S. Schools	1
EDUC B301	Curriculum and Pedagogy Seminar ¹	1
EDUC B303	Practice Teaching in Secondary Schools (and EDUC B302 Practice Teaching Seminar) ²	3
Total Units		8

¹: Fall semester, prior to student teaching
²: These courses are taken concurrently for three credits

There are additional requirements for students preparing for certification; contact Education Department Adviser Margo Schall (mschall@brynmawr.edu) for details. Students must also maintain a grade point average of 3.0 or higher and pass state exams for beginning teachers (state requirements). To be admitted to the culminating student teaching phase of the program, students must earn a grade of a 2.7 or higher in both EDUC B200 Community Learning Collaborative: Practicing Partnership and EDUC B301 Curriculum and Pedagogy Seminar and be recommended by their major department and the director of the Education Department. To be recommended for certification, students must earn a grade of 2.7 or higher in EDUC B302 (Practice Teaching Seminar) and a grade of Satisfactory in EDUC B303 Practice Teaching in Secondary Schools.

Note: Students practice-teach full time for 12 weeks in a local school during the spring semester of their senior year. Given this demanding schedule, students are not able to take courses other than the Practice Teaching Seminar and senior seminar for their major.

Bryn Mawr and Haverford graduates may complete the requirements for secondary teacher certification at Bryn Mawr in a post-baccalaureate program at reduced tuition.

Title II Reporting

Title II of the Higher Education Act (HEA) requires that a full teacher preparation report, including the institution’s pass rate as well as the state’s pass rate, be available to the public on request. Copies of the report may be requested from the Education Department at (610) 526-5010.

Major Requirements

To satisfy the requirements for the major in Education Studies, students take a minimum of six courses within the Education Department: an approved entry-point course, four 200-level courses, and one 300-level capstone course. In addition, a maximum of five allied courses from outside of the Education Department are required, for a total of 11 major credits.

Community-engaged learning through placements/partnerships/field work is also a central requirement of the major. Thinking with and learning from this work is a strand of Education Studies woven throughout coursework and highlighted in the capstone process.

Minor Requirements

Six credits are required for the minor in Education Studies without certification:

One may be taken at Swarthmore, Penn, or while studying away.
One 300-level capstone course, selected from the following:
- EDUC B311 Course EDUC B311 Not Found: Theories of Change in Educational Institutions
- EDUC B301 Curriculum and Pedagogy Seminar
- EDUC B310 Redefining Educational Practice: Making Space for Learning in Higher Education/SOWK B676 Course SOWK B676 Not Found

See “Requirements for Secondary Certification for Undergraduates and Post-bacs” below for the minor with certification.

EDUC B105 Education Studies: Theories, Practices, & Possibilities (1 Unit)

This course is designed for students interested in exploring key theories, competencies, and questions in the field of education studies in general and the Education Department at Bryn Mawr and Haverford in particular in relation to each enrolled student’s experiences and aspirations. Areas of exploration include: the significance of community-based praxis and research; skill-building in conflict resolution and restorative practice; the nature of assessment; the role of technology in education and society; the meaning and purpose of theory; and, throughout, retrospective experiential reflection in dialogue with students’ future goals.

EDUC B200 Community Learning Collaborative: Practicing Partnership (1 Unit)

One of the four entry-point options for student majoring or minoring in Education Studies, this course is open to students exploring an interest in educational practice, theory, research, and policy. The course asks how myriad people, groups, and fields have defined the purpose of education, and considers the implications of conflicting definitions for generating new, more just, and more inclusive modes of "doing school" informed by community-based as well as academic streams of educational practice. In collaboration with practicing educators, students learn practical and philosophical approaches to experiential, community-engaged learning across individual relationships and organizational contexts. Fieldwork in an area school or organization required

EDUC B210 Perspectives on Special Education (1 Unit)

One of the four entry-point options for students majoring or minoring in Education Studies, this course has as its goal to introduce students to a range of topics, challenges and dilemmas that all teachers need to consider. Students will explore pedagogical strategies and tools that empower all learners on the neurological spectrum. Some of the topics covered in the course include how the brain learns, how past learning experiences impact teaching, how education and civil rights law impacts access to services, and how to create an inclusive classroom environment that welcomes and affirms all learners. The field of special education is vast and complex. Therefore, the course is designed as an introduction to the most pertinent issues, and as a launch pad for further exploration. Weekly fieldwork required.

EDUC B215 Democracy, Race, and American Education (1 Unit)

In this course participants will collectively ask: what function does education play in a healthy democracy? How has the United States’ history of race relations informed its institutions–both governing and educational ones? And perhaps most critically, what do we hold as hopes for the future of education and how can we shape that future? This seminar will include film screenings and engage with the work of scholars, activists, collectives, and politicians.

EDUC B217 Lessons in Liberation: Rejecting Colonialist Power in Edu (1 Unit)

Formal schooling is often perceived as a positive vestige of colonization, yet traditional practices continue a legacy of oppression, in different forms. This course will analyze education practices, language, knowledge production, and culture in ways especially relevant in the age of globalization. We will explore and contextualize the subjugation of students and educators that perpetuates colonialist power and implement practices that amplify the voices of the marginalized. We will learn lessons in liberation from a historical perspective and consider contemporary influence, with a cross-continental focus. Liberatory education practices have always existed, often on the margins of colonial forces, but present nonetheless. This course will support students’ pursuit of a politics of resistance, subversion, and transformation. We will focus on the development of a critical consciousness, utilizing abolitionist and fugitive teaching pedagogy and culturally responsive pedagogy as tools for resistance. Students will engage with novels, documentaries, historical texts, and scholarly documents to explore US and Cape Verdean education as case studies. In this course, we will consider the productive tensions between an explicit commitment to ideas of progress, and the anticolonial concepts and paradigms which impact what is created to achieve education liberation.

EDUC B220 Changing Pedagogies in Mathematics and Science (1 Unit)

This Praxis course will examine research-based approaches to teaching mathematics and science. What does research tell us about how people learn? How can one translate this learning theory into teaching approaches that will help all students learn mathematics and science? How are these new approaches, that often involve active, hands-on, inquiry based learning, being implemented in the classroom? What challenges arise when one tries to bring about these types of changes in education? How do issues of equity, discrimination, and social justice impact math and science education? The Praxis component of the course usually involves two (2) two hour visits per week for 8 weeks to a local math or science classroom.

EDUC B225 Topics: Empowering Learners (1 Unit)

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Praxis course.

EDUC B240 Qualitative Research (1 Unit)

This course teaches students to use and interpret observation, survey, interview, focus group, and other qualitative methods of educational research, as well as to read and write about such research. In addition to class meetings, research teams will meet regularly.

EDUC B250 Literacies and Education (1 Unit)

A critical exploration of what counts as literacy, who decides, and what the implications are for teaching and learning. Students explore both their own and others experiences of literacy through reading and writing about power, privilege, access and responsibility around issues of adult, ESL, cultural, multicultural, gendered, academic and critical literacies. Fieldwork required. Priority given first to those pursuing certification or a minor in educational studies.

EDUC B260 Reconceptualizing Power in Education (1 Unit)

The systematic critical exploration of the influence of power in education requires attention and re-conceptualization; this course investigates the following question: how can power be redistributed to ensure equitable educational outcomes? We will examine the production of transformative knowledge, arguing the necessity for including creativity and multi-disciplinary collaboration in contemporary societies. Supporting students’ pursuit of a politics of resistance, subversion, and transformation will allow for the rethinking of traditional education. We will also center the intersections between race, class, gender, sexuality, language, religion, citizenship status, and geographic region, assessing their impact on teaching and learning. Weekly fieldwork required.

EDUC B266 Geographies of School and Learning: Urban Education Reconsidered (1 Unit)

This course examines issues, challenges, and possibilities of urban education in contemporary America. We use as critical lenses issues of race, class, and culture; urban learners, teachers, and school systems; and restructuring and reform. While we look at urban education nationally over several decades, we use Philadelphia as a focal “case” that students investigate through documents and school placements. Weekly fieldwork in a school required.

EDUC B275 Emergent Multilingual Learners in U.S. Schools (1 Unit)

This course, offered as both an elective as well as a course required for students pursuing secondary teaching certification in Pennsylvania through the Bi-Co Education Program, operates from a heteroglossic and culturally and linguistically sustaining stance that has four intersecting aims. First, the course seeks to support students in a critical self-examination of the ways that language has shaped their lives and learning, particularly in the context of racism, linguicism, ethno- and euro-centrism, marginalization and austerity in schools and society. Second, students investigate the ways that both historical and contemporary educational policy concerning the education of EMLLs in the United States has operated from a monoglossic orientation that has limited programmatic and pedagogical options within the classroom to those that fail to address the lived realities and needs of this growing population of students. Third, students collaboratively research and present their findings on heteroglossic classroom language practices that, in contrast to those above, respect and leverage students’ community cultural wealth and full linguistic repertoires. Fourth, students, drawing upon these findings as well as research on multiple language and literacy acquisition, hone their skills as curriculum designers and pedagogues, working to address EMLLs’ diverse strengths and needs in mainstream classrooms and other educational settings. All four aims are bolstered by weekly fieldwork opportunities to learn with and from EMLLs and their educators in the Philadelphia area. Lottery Preference(s): 1. EDUC majors and Certification students; 2. EDUC minors; 3. then by seniority

EDUC B282 Abolitionist Teaching for Education Revolution (1 Unit)

This course will focus on the development of a critical consciousness, utilizing abolitionist teaching pedagogy and culturally responsive pedagogy, as tools for social transformation and resistance. Postcolonial Theory and Critical Race Theory will be utilized as lenses for understanding the impact of white supremacy in deeply rooted institutions. Formal schooling is often perceived as a positive vestige of colonization, yet traditional practices often continue a legacy of oppression, in different forms. Postcolonial Theory provides a variety of methodological tools for the analysis of education and culture that are especially relevant in the age of globalization, necessitating the reconceptualization of citizenship. Critical Race Theory offers a set of tenets that can be used to contextualize subjugation and implement practices that amplify the voices of the marginalized. Afro-centrism and Critical Black Feminism inform a revolutionized education, which can, and should, support students’ pursuit of a politics of resistance, subversion, and transformation. Students will engage with novels, documentaries, historical texts, and scholarly documents to explore US education as a case study. Experiential trips to Afrocentric and non-traditional educational spaces add depth to our work. In this course, we will consider the productive tensions between an explicit commitment to ideas of emancipation and progress, and the postcolonial concepts and paradigms which impact what is created in the achievement of education revolution.

EDUC B290 Co-creation for Equity & Justice: Theory & Practice (1 Unit)

This course explores co-creation of teaching and learning for equity and justice as a growing practice in various national and global contexts. Students will: (a) analyze the theories, traditions, and policies that inform co-creation (e.g., pedagogical partnership; student voice/Committee on the Rights of the Child; the democratic schools movement; critical and feminist pedagogies; decolonizing and anti-racist education); (b) explore practices of co-creation across contexts around the world; and (c) generate an action plan for a co-creation approach appropriate to one of the area of specialization offered through the major in Education Studies (e.g., secondary education, out-of-school contexts, higher education) and focused on fostering equity and justice within that area.

EDUC B295 Exploring and Enacting Transformation of Higher Education. (1 Unit)

As institutions of higher education embrace and even seek greater diversity, we also see an increase in tensions born of differences across which we have little preparation to communicate, learn, and live. This course will be co-created by students enrolled and the instructor, and it will provide a forum for exploration of diversity and difference and a platform for action and campus-wide education. Extensive, informal writing and more formal research and presentations will afford you the opportunity to craft empowering narratives for yourselves and your lives and to take research and teaching beyond the classroom. Two to three hours of campus-based field work required each week.

EDUC B300 Community-Engaged Learning: Theory, Research, and Practice (1 Unit)

As one of the foundations of education studies, community-engaged learning requires that students integrate academic and experiential learning, which depends on the development of knowledge, skills, and dispositions to learn from field experience. By examining and enacting community-engaged learning from the perspectives of theory, research, and practice, advanced Education students in this course will extend and deepen prior experience in an educational organization with a blend of continued field work, associated research, and mentoring of Education students new to the setting. Through this approach, enrolled students will a) build an enriched relational, contextual (policy-based and geographic) and historical understanding of a specific educational organization; b) gain an understanding of how practitioners and learners in that site conceptualize their work and goals; and c) study and practice methods for initiating and supporting students of education in successful, imaginative working relationships that foster community-engaged learning towards equity and justice.

EDUC B301 Curriculum and Pedagogy Seminar (1 Unit)

A consideration of theoretical and applied issues related to effective curriculum design, pedagogical approaches and related issues of teaching and learning. Fieldwork is required. Enrollment is limited to 15 with priority given first to students pursuing certification and second to seniors planning to teach.

EDUC B303 Practice Teaching in Secondary Schools (2 Unit)

Supervised teaching in secondary schools (12 weeks). Two units of credit are given for this course. Open only to students preparing for state certification.

EDUC B308 Inquiries into Black Study, Language Justice, and Education (1 Unit)

Growing out of the Lagim Tehi Tuma/”Thinking Together” program (LTT), the course will explore the implications for education in realizing the significance of global Black liberation and Black Study/ies—particularly in relation to questions of the suppression and sustenance of language diversity and with a focus, as well, on Pan-Africanism—by engaging with one particular community as a touchstone for learning from and forwarding culturally sustaining knowledge. Prerequisites: Two courses, at least one in Education, with the second in Africana Studies, Linguistics, Sociology, or Anthropology; or permission of the instructor.

EDUC B310 Redefining Educational Practice: Making Space for Learning in Higher Education (1 Unit)

A course focused on exploring, developing, and refining pedagogical conceptions and approaches appropriate to higher education contexts. Three hours a week of fieldwork are required. Enrollment is limited to 20 with priority given to students pursuing the minor in educational studies.

EDUC B403 Supervised Work (1 Unit)

EDUC B425 Praxis III: Independent Study (1 Unit)

Praxis III courses are Independent Study courses and are developed by individual students, in collaboration with faculty and field supervisors. A Praxis courses is distinguished by genuine collaboration with fieldsite organizations and by a dynamic process of reflection that incorporates lessons learned in the field into the classroom setting and applies theoretical understanding gained through classroom study to work done in the broader community.

ARTA B251 Arts Teaching in Educational and Community Settings (1 Unit)

This is a Praxis II course intended for students who have substantial experience in an art form and are interested in extending that experience into teaching and learning at educational and community sites. Following an overview of the history of the arts in education, the course will investigate underlying theories and practices. The praxis component will allow students to create a fluid relationship between theory and practice through observing, teaching, and reflecting on arts practices in educational contexts. School or community placement 4 hours a week. Preparation: At least an intermediate level of experience in an art form. This course counts toward the minor in Dance or Theater and towards a major or minor in Education.

ARTD B260 Dance Education: Practice and Performance (1 Unit)

Dance education is a world where teaching and performance coalesce to center being-with-our-bodies as a platform for learning. This course involves collaboratively creating an educational program for young audiences, communities, and participants in various educational sites. The seminar portion of the course engages students in reading, writing, and discussion on various perspectives of dance pedagogy, theory, and teaching strategies. The embodied component of the course brings students into a fluid relationship between theory and practice through teaching, peer-observation, and reflection on arts in education. There will be field visits during the course that include teaching and performance opportunities. This course is intended for students with experience in any dance form or theatrical performance at any level and we welcome students who are courageously beginning their journey with dance. It is embodied and writing attentive.

ENGL B220 The Teaching of Writing (1 Unit)

This Praxis course is designed for students interested in teaching or tutoring writing at the high-school or college level. The course focuses on current theories of rhetoric and composition, theories of writing and learning, writing pedagogy, and literacy issues. Students will get hands-on experience with curriculum design and lesson planning, strategies for classroom teaching and individual instruction, and will develop digital projects related to multilingual writing and plagiarism. The Praxis components of the course are primarily project-based, but we may also make one or two group visits to local sites where writing is taught.

ENGL B261 Colonizing Girlhoods: L.M.Montgomery and Laura Ingalls Wilde (1 Unit)

This class explores what we can see anew when we juxtapose two iconic figures of North American children’s literature: L.M. Montgomery’s Anne Shirley and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s fictionalized self-portrait, Laura Ingalls. Both characters have risen to mythic proportions in their respective countries, and are powerful signs in an international culture industry. After setting up key eighteenth-century concepts and contexts for what French historian Philippe Ariès calls the "invention of childhood”, we will explore the ways in which images of young girls have been deployed as the benign faces of ruthless imperialism, reading through the entirety of each original series. We will track the geographical movement of both heroines, with particular attention to different spatial narratives of nationhood and empire-building, whether manifest destiny in the U.S., or what critic Northrop Frye has termed the “garrison mentality” of Canadian culture. Here we’ll be especially attentive to commonalities in how both authors produce class-stratified and racialized notions of girlhood, as well as divergences in how both countries, each still framed to varying degrees as the “infant nation” of Great Britain, yield new and evolving discourses of girlhood.

SOCL B258 Sociology of Education (1 Unit)

Major sociological theories of the relationships between education and society, focusing on the effects of education on inequality in the United States and the historical development of primary, secondary, and post-secondary education in the United States. Other topics include education and social selection, testing and tracking, and micro- and macro-explanations of differences in educational outcomes. This is a Praxis II course; placements are in local schools.

SOCL B317 Comparative Social Policy: Cuba, China, US, Scandinavia (1 Unit)

This course will examine different countries' policy choices to address different societal challenges. Four societal types - socialist (Cuba), post-socialist (China), capitalist (US), and social-democratic (Scandinavia) - will be studies to help us understand how these different kinds of societies conceive of social problems and propose and implement attempted solutions. We will examine particular problems/solutions in four domains: health/sports; education; environment; technological development. As we explore these domains, we will attend to methodological issues involved in making historical and institutional comparisons

Academic Catalog

Education

Requirements for the Major and Minor in Education Studies

Specialization Options

Capstone Requirements

Capstone Course Options By Specialization

Secondary Education

Secondary Education with Certification

Elementary Education

Higher Education

Out-of-School Contexts

Requirements: Secondary Certification for Undergraduates & Post-bacs

Title II Reporting

Major Requirements

Minor Requirements

Print Options