Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Investigates theories and issues associated with developing educational programs and practices in various educational contexts. Addresses the development of new programs and their implementation in schools and other educational settings.

COURSE DETAILS:

Course Details:
Education 816 explores the design and implementation of educational programs in various contexts, through a contemplative lens. The course examines the factors shaping educational program development and implementation and the inter-play between them. The course looks at theory and best practice in the field, the role educators’ inner lives play, program design frameworks and how context, content and processes interact. Students will have opportunities to engage with these elements of educational program design and also to develop and present their own program framework.

In this time of rapid, unpredictable civilizational churn, the rationale, design, theoretical roots and implementation of educational programs, while arguably always laden with moral gravity, raises many ethical, intellectual and programmatic questions:

How might we design and implement programs that

1. Serve others well?
2. Meet the learning needs of all students?
3. Acknowledges and factors in our own cognitive and socially constructed biases?
4. Cultivates human flourishing (what Aristotle referred to as eudaimonia)?
5. Illuminates, validates and integrate students’ inner lives into the learning?
6. Embodies the principles and practices that represent the best of educational theory and practice?
7. Cultivates students’ contemplative disposition?

The design of this course will reflect the contemplative pedagogical principles of the program: infusing the learning experiences with conventional 3^rd person knowledge acquisition (objectivity) with 1^st person understandings and perspectives (subjectivity) and with the dynamic, generative relationship (inter-play) between the two, 2^nd person learning (inter-subjectivity).

Meeting Dates:
May 3/4, 24/25
Jun 7/8, 21/22
July 12/13, 26/27

Meeting Times:
Fridays, 5:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Saturdays, 9:00 am - 4:00 pm

Additional Details:
This course uses Parker Palmer’s The Courage to Teach as a core text. Other learning resources (“readables” and “watchables”) will be assigned throughout the course.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

1. Investigate theories and issues associated with developing educational programs and practices in various educational contexts;
2. Address the development of new programs and their implementation in schools and other educational settings;
3. Explore how theory and research can contribute to the design and implementation of programs that are meaningful and promote transformative contemplative learning;
4. Apply the principles of contemplative inquiry-based program design to bespoke educational programs;

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: