Course Descriptions

The courses in the GSE/TFA Program are specifically designed for TFA corps members teaching in urban public and charter schools. They provide the necessary course content required by the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The methods courses support classroom teachers by focusing on content area knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. Other courses engage students in a deeper understanding of child and adolescent development, the role of education in American society, and the complexities of the achievement gap and educational inequity. Many courses enable teachers to understand the ways that reflective practioners can improve their classroom practices and the ways in which teachers can become change agents in their classrooms and schools. There are some changes in course syllabi, readings, and assignments each year based on student feedback.

Courses

Summer Bridge to Urban Education
Child and Adolescent Development
School and Society
Content Area Methods Courses and Advanced Content Area Methods Courses
Master's Electives
Inquiry into Practice
Master's Thesis Courses

Summer Bridge to Urban Education

One week in August Year 1, 9:00 – 4:00
Master’s and Certification students K – 12

This course is designed as a “bridge” between the summer TFA institute and teaching and entrance into urban schools, as well as an introduction to urban education and to the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. Along with presentations by GSE faculty, students are in groups facilitated by experienced urban teachers, TFA alum, and current corps members. Students work part of the week in small groups investigating the ways in which teachers in urban settings learn about and develop relationships with their students and create classroom communities where learning occurs. The focus of the week is “Looking back…Looking forward,” and offers TFA students ways to:

Become students of their classroom practices;
Learn strategies for building community and relationships in the classroom;
Learn with and from experienced teachers; and
Learn to live with some discomfort and dissonance.

This course focuses on some specific questions:
1. Who are our students?

How do we learn about them through building relationships, listening to them, looking at student work, and understanding issues of race, culture, and diversity?
What do students bring to the classroom in terms of knowledge, skills, cultural contexts, issues of power, resources, urban issues, and identities?

2. How do we see ourselves as teachers?

What do teachers bring to the classroom in terms of knowledge, skills, resources, issues of power, cultural contexts, and identities?
How do these things affect our choices about strategies for teaching and how we use the resources from Penn, TFA and the School District?
How can we learn from other teachers?

The goals for the course include:

Learn more about the context of the school district, about teaching from experienced school district teachers in the Philadelphia Writing Project, and about the value of a learning community with and among other teachers;
Begin to think about theories of learning and instruction and how these are tied to classroom practices;
Make use of a beginning understanding of issues of race, culture and power when entering the classroom;
Consider the importance of writing as a tool for learning – for students and teachers;
Be prepared to think about these issues in classrooms and in the context of other GSE/UPenn courses;
Begin to use TFA and School District materials and tools in a thoughtful and reflective manner to make positive changes to instruction.

Child and Adolescent Development

Weekend course, September – May, Year 1
Master’s and Certification students K – 12

Given of the importance of understanding and getting to know students, this course seeks to explore the multiple aspects of child and adolescent development using an ecological, life-span perspective that acknowledges and critically examines the diversity among the adolescent population. It will provide an overview of the application of developmental theory and research to the processes of teaching and learning. Students will explore gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status and investigate both classic and contemporary theories on youth development. As young people of every age change, they encounter new and varied responses from the surrounding environment that can both challenge and encourage positive development. Particular attention is paid to the role of culture, family, and the community and their affect on learning and development. This course also offers a place for new teachers to share and make sense of their introduction into their classrooms and schools. Discussions of specific concerns of their day-to-day teaching and classroom management issues and the sharing of ideas and resources will be a significant part of the course.

This inquiry seminar will expose you to theories of child and adolescent development and provide space for you to connect life-course processes with your experiences in the classroom.
Part of this investigation will require that we, as applied developmentalists, reflect on who we are and consider how our identities mediate students’ emerging identities as learners and as people.
The course will take an ecological perspective of development.
We will read important theories that connect the developing individuals to their family, friends, school, and community.
We will discuss issues of class, race, gender, and sexuality as it relates to a youth’s learning identity.
There will be a focus on understanding youth and how their interactions with their environmental contexts can encourage or challenge positive development.

School & Society

Weekend course, September – May, Year 1
Master’s and Certification students K – 12

This course sets out to investigate the social, political, and cultural context of education and schooling in society. We will examine the ways schools and institutions of education are implicated in a range of social issues and interrogate the role of education in relation to social mobility, life chances, and civic opportunity. By historically linking the development of educational initiatives to notions of power, nation building, and citizenship, this class also furthers an understanding of the philosophical underpinnings and assumptions about the purpose of education within democratic nations and its role(s) within our current social and political climate. Discussions of differential access to power and resources will be central to our class dialogue, thereby providing a forum for critically exploring issues of educational policy, teaching practice, and the aims and purposes of education that are intimately connected to social stratification. The course will also provide a space to use these frameworks to think critically about pedagogical practice by drawing on students’ experiential knowledge of teaching to imagine how critical engagements with, and responses to, multiple contexts can help urban educators transform the socially reproductive practices of schools.

Course Objectives

To provide a framework for understanding the social, political, and cultural contexts of education;
To think about the place and purpose of education and schooling within democratic nations;
To interrogate dominant norms and assumptions that inform school policy and practices, and the potential they hold for (re)producing social inequalities;
To analyze how educational institutions construct and locate student achievement, failure, social problems and behavior;
To think critically about the social construction of knowledge;
To interrupt deficit models of ‘educational failure’ and ‘disengagement’ as a way to think deeply about disciplinary strategies, student resistance, and ‘behavioral problems’;
To encourage self-reflection of pedagogical practice as a way to affect change.

Content Area Methods Courses and Advanced Content Area Methods Courses

Tuesday course, fall and spring semesters, Year 1
Weekend course, fall and spring semesters, Year 2
Master’s and Certification students K – 12

The methods courses are designed to help students:

Develop content area knowledge required for teaching;
Become acquainted with the theoretical and research literature on learning in that content area;
Learn specific strategies for instruction;
Develop skills in talking with, observing, and appreciating children as learners, thinkers and users of technology;
Learn to choose, experiment with, adapt, and reflect on the appropriateness of different tasks, texts, assignments, materials, technological tools, and other resources;
Gain an appreciation for the role of discourse in learning and explore ways to facilitate it in classrooms;
Develop awareness of ways the classroom environment and community influences students' learning and consider ways to establish classroom norms and routines that support your goals;
Understand equity issues pertinent to teaching and develop the propensity to critically examine your teaching and classroom in light of these concerns.

Master’s Electives

Tuesday and weekend courses, May and June Year 1
Master’s students K – 12
NOTE: These are subject to change

Urban Education Reform
This course takes a historical look at various perspectives on urban school reform. For teachers, the view from the classroom often raises questions about the larger contexts: the school, the district, and the city, state, and federal landscapes. The course addresses a variety of ways in which reformers have approached changing schools through curriculum, instruction, school organization, and school size, among others. It looks more closely at two very different approaches to improving urban education, digs deeper into AYP and NCLB and what they mean for urban schools, and looks at reform in one particular school in Philadelphia. Students examine leadership in schools and consider what makes reforms “work,” what success means, and how reform can be sustained. The instructor, Dr. James “Torch” Lytle, was a high school principal and regional superintendent in Philadelphia and spent six years as the superintendent of Trenton, New Jersey Public Schools before coming to GSE.

The Economics of Education
The economics of education draws upon many areas of economic specialization. This is a survey course at the introductory level designed to provide an overview of the theoretical perspectives and topics in the economics of education. The course addresses some of the larger issues about economics and education: the value of education to society and issues such as vouchers, gender, and race in connection to the economics of education. It assumes that the student has at least some background in economics, enough to apply microeconomic theory to a variety of educational policy issues. Although the course will require familiarity with algebraic representations, it will not require calculus. The course emphasizes analytical skills using economic tools for educational policy.

Multicultural Issues in Education
Students’ educational experiences are directly influenced by the ways in which educators think about and approach factors such as culture, race, ethnicity, social class, gender, sexual orientation and disability. This course examines the ways in which educational institutions and the educators within them structure learning experiences for various students depending in part on their interpretations of these students’ “differences.” Educators must be aware of issues that may arise due to at least three factors: (1) differences between teachers’ and students’ backgrounds; (2) how institutions and individual teachers create learning environments to engage with these differences; and (3) how aspects of identity are framed and understood by teachers, parents, students and school administrators. It explores the formation, meanings and implications of various ideologies and beliefs specifically as they relate to teaching and learning and challenges common beliefs about our educational system as well as the society in which it has been shaped. The instructor is Dr. Sharon Ravitch, senior lecturer at GSE.

Education Law
The law influences almost every facet of education policy and practice. From liability to finance and rights to race, teachers, administrators, and policymakers must consider legal requirements and legal ramifications when acting. This course examines the laws and legal principles that affect education. Topics to be covered include the Constitution and schooling, rights of students and teachers, legal responsibilities of teachers and administrators, and the role of the law in education policymaking. In addition, students will be exposed to the essential workings of the legal system. Special emphasis will be placed on deepening understanding of the legal concepts that undergird education law. The topics to be covered may be altered depending on the interests of the students. The instructor, Phillip Buckley, is a doctoral student at GSE who is also a practicing lawyer.

Inquiry into Practice

Tuesday course, fall semester Year 2
Master’s students K – 12

In Inside/Outside: Teacher Research and Knowledge, Lytle and Cochran Smith have defined teacher research as “systematic and intentional inquiry carried out by teachers about their own practice.” The work of practitioner inquiry in education, while reflective and self critical can also be transformative. It positions teachers and other practitioners as research participants, capable of generating new knowledge about teaching. It can also serve to reveal and address inequities that exist in our educational systems and institutions through the kinds of questions and issues that teachers chose to explore. This type of inquiry into practice has important implications for educational research which will be explored throughout this course. This course is designed to introduce second year TFA teachers to the methodology of teacher research and to create a supportive intellectual community in which these teachers can explore their own questions about their students, their classrooms and their schools. There are some basic assumptions with which we approach this work: 1) that all students are capable of learning to high and rigorous standards of performance, 2) there are inequities in our schools that teachers are well situated to investigate and address, 3) teachers have the responsibility ( and right!) to address these inequities and strive for social justice and 4) as teachers we can learn how to do this and provide support for each other in the form of intellectual communities of practice.

Master’s Thesis Courses

Tuesday course, spring semester Year 2
Master’s students K – 12

These courses are designed to support the writing of a master’s thesis to be completed at the end of the semester. Students will learn about developing research questions, writing a literature review, and analyzing a topic of their choice around an issue of educational policy or urban education.