EDU 501 : Educational Leadership and Societal Change: A Comparative Perspective

EDU 501 introduces first-year students to the main themes of the MA program, beginning with a critical inquiry into the dialectical relations of school and society. It examines social forces of change and persistence as the structural constraints, as well as the opportunities (for innovation and creativity, for example), within which schools, teachers, and administrators operate. Conversely, students study the generative results of school reform nationally and cross-nationally for the organization of society around the goals of education in general. Social structures – family, home, church, and community – educate no less than the school classroom and teacher. Through intensive readings and discussion, small-group projects, and weekly essays, the course, which takes place during the first Fall Block, asks students to reflect on ways in which the educational functions of school and society complement and oppose one another, foster needed changes, both in our schools and in the larger society, and impede them, protect valued traditions and act to destroy them. The need for leadership at all levels forces an examination as well of the types of leaders who in different societies and at different times have successfully brokered relations between schooling and societal change.

Overview

Subject

Graduate School Courses

Units

2