Education 803
EDUC 803 - Equity and Social Justice in Education
Credits: (3)
Instructional Method: Lecture
Catalog Description
This course provides education doctoral students an opportunity to explore the tensions of power, access, and equity through the range of dimensions in which diversity is manifested among leaders, staff, and stakeholders in today’s educational environments.
Content
This course is part of a series of courses that introduces students to the discourses and theories on equity and social justice in education including how leaders can enact social justice in their settings and authentically engage their stakeholders and the broader community in facilitating equitable change for their marginalized, vulnerable, racialized, and minoritized populations. In this course, students will learn the discourse, theories, concepts, and language around equity and social justice. Students will be introduced to systemic inequities in education centered on class, race, ability, gender, and sexuality and how to resist deficit framing of problems of practice. Students will also better understand their own individual identity development by critically self-reflecting on their professional position and practices and how they can positively impact the communities and stakeholders they lead.
Detailed Description of Conduct of Course
This course may include leadership self-assessments, professional reading, case study analysis, discussion, lecture in synchronous and asynchronous online formats, and application of course content to problems, issues, and decisions within educational school systems and other organizational settings in which students are engaged as leaders.
Student Learning Outcomes
In this course, students will:
1. Develop a critical awareness of how systemic inequities in education arise and are maintained over time.
2. Become critically conscious of how, and why there are inequities in
education.
3. Identify key terms related to concepts surrounding diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice.
4. Identify how problems of practice in educational systems are the result of
systemic factors rather than just the behavior of individuals.
5. See the system and structures that shape the experiences of those impacted by the problem.
6. Be able to critically self-reflect on their own practices, assumptions, and worldviews and how they shape the outcomes of their stakeholders.
7. Be able to use equity audits as a learning tool to assess themselves and their environment.
8. Create equitable goals to promote equity and social justice in their setting and explain how their improvement science projects would accomplish these goals.
Assessment Measures
Students will be assessed in multiple ways that may include, but are not limited to, applied project reflections, in-class contributions, and case studies.
Reviewed and approved
June, 2023