**PLEASE NOTE**

Attendance to all scheduled class sessions (including session 1) is mandatory. Late arrivals, early departures, and unexplained absences will be reflected in your final grade. There will be a full first class session, including a pre-reading that will be sent via email the week before classes start. It is your responsibility to check your SFU email regularly.

“The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations that we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor that is planted deep within each of us, and that knows only the oppressors’ tactics, the oppressors’ relationships.”

Audre Lorde, 1970

“Age, race, class, and sex: Women redefining difference”

Prerequisites

60 hours of credit. Students who have received credit for EDUC 441, EDUC 382-4 Special Topics from fall 2003-3 on, cannot take EDUC 382 of further credit.

Course Description

The aim of this course is for students to develop the understanding and language with which to dialogue about issues related to diversity in education from a critical social justice framework.

A critical approach to social justice refers to specific theoretical perspectives that recognize that society is stratified (i.e., divided and unequal) in significant and far-reaching ways along social group lines that include diversity of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ability. Critical social justice recognizes inequality as deeply embedded in the fabric of society (i.e., as structural), and actively seeks to change this. Specifically this course will introduce students to key concepts in social justice education including: critical thinking, socialization, group identity, prejudice, discrimination, oppression, power, privilege, and White supremacy.

The course activities are organized with attention to the following learning objectives. By the end of the course, students will be able to:

•Recognize and explain how relations of unequal social power are constantly being negotiated at both the micro (individual) and macro (structural) levels in institutions including but not limited to schools;

•Understand and describe one’s own positions within these relations of unequal power;

•Develop the vocabulary and understanding of the key concepts with which to examine issues of diversity in Canadian schools within the theory of critical social justice;

•Improve one’s critical thinking, listening, writing, and speaking skills;

•Develop a plan for acting on all of the above in service of a more just society.

Required texts

Sensoy, Ö. & DiAngelo, R. (2011). Is everyone really equal? An introduction to key concepts in social justice education. NY: Teachers College Press. ISBN 978-0-8077-5269-2 (paper)

Additional readings will be required. These will predominantly consist of journal articles to supplement each week’s readings from the primary text.

Required Learning Activities

ASSIGNMENTS                                            DUE DATE                    VALUE

Attendance, Participation, Homework*     Ongoing                         25 %

In class pop quizzes                                      Ongoing                         25 %
Midterm**                                                       Week 7                          25 %

Final**                                                             Week 13                        25 %

*you will regularly collect ‘data’ via field assignments – trip to a toy store, viewing various media, etc.; as well, you will produce work in small groups during class. This work will regularly be collected & graded.

** details will be made available in class.

Photo by ÖS, Vancouver area high school