Approaches urban schools and communities as sites of promise and innovation as well as sites for social and political struggle. Examines the significance of community organizing as a form of education and the role of community organizing to improve urban schools. Readings include an examination of organizing tactics from historical figures such as Saul Alinsky, Ella Baker, Myles Horton, and Dolores Huerta. Topics may include 'grow your own' teacher initiatives, parent trigger laws, and culturally-sustaining educational programming. This course originates in Education and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: URBS 1015)

Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester

Why do you go to school? What is the central purpose of public education in the United States? Should public schools prepare students for college? The workforce? Competent citizenship? Who makes these decisions and through what policy process are they implemented? Explores the ways that public school reformers have answered such questions, from the Common School Crusaders of the early nineteenth century to present advocates of No Child Left Behind. Examining public education as both a product of social, political, and economic change and as a force in molding American society, highlights enduring tensions in the development and practice of public schooling in a democratic republic.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester

Explores higher education in the contemporary United States through a sociological lens, highlighting the ways that elite colleges and universities both promote social mobility and perpetuate inequality. Examines the functions of higher education for students and society; issues of inequality in college access, financing, campus experiences, and outcomes later in life; the history and consequences of affirmative action; how and why historically white colleges and universities have diversified their student bodies; the challenges and benefits of diversity and inclusion on campus; and other topics. Emphasis on writing sociologically for public and academic audiences This course originates in Sociology and is crosslisted with: Education. (Same as: SOC 1028)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester

What are the purposes of public education and what makes it public? Do schools serve an individual good or a collective good? Is the U.S. system of public education organized to serve these purposes? What is the public’s responsibility towards public education? Do schools promote social justice or reproduce inequality in a diverse society? Which theories and purposes of education motivate current reform efforts? Who shapes public discourse about public education and by what strategies? This course employs a mixed approach of reading, discussion, and class-based activities to explore important educational issues, including school reform, multicultural education, finance, charter schools, vouchers, segregation, accountability, and standardization. Students will participate in a short-term field placement in a local public school.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

This course examines the cultural and pedagogical strengths and challenges of hip hop pedagogy as an alternative approach to the whiteness and patriotism of prevalent forms of civics education. The course begins with historical and theoretical perspectives on Black cultural phenomena like jazz and blues and how they set the stage for hip hop. We then turn to the various waves of hip hop pedagogy and its impact on classroom learning and educational research. Students will consider how hip hop pedagogy creates an educational space for counter-narratives in civics education. Through exploring hip hop pedagogy students will analyze how hip hop reflects and criticizes America’s cultural, social, political, and economic processes. Although centered on hip hop, students will be examining intersectional racism, classism, and the interplay between popular culture and how idealized western values of hyper-masculinity, rampant consumerism, and whiteness as property are centered in civics education.

Species Extinction. Deforestation. Acid Rain. Climate Change. For a century and a half Americans have quarreled ardently over the causes and consequences of environmental decline. The frequency of these debates—and their ferocity—compels the question of how Americans came to know and believe, what they thought they knew and believed, about the natural world. This course investigates how educators and entrepreneurs, politicians and policy makers, used environmental education as a vehicle for promoting a wide array of cultural, political, and economic beliefs alongside, if not often in place of, fostering students’ understanding of the natural world. It examines many different forms of environmental education put into practice over the course of the long-twentieth century and demonstrates how teaching about nature was often harnessed to influence young people’s identities, behaviors, and beliefs.

Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester

An examination of the economic, social, political, and pedagogical implications of universal education in American classrooms. Focuses on the right of every student, including students with physical and/or learning differences, and those who have been identified as gifted, to an equitable education. Requires a minimum of twenty-four hours of observation in a local secondary school.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

An examination of educational policy-making and implementation at the federal, state, and local levels. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between policy and school practice and the role practitioners play in policy-making. Policies explored include school choice, standards and accountability, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, the Common Core, and Proficiency-Based Instruction.

Examines the ways that formal schooling influences individuals and the ways that social structures and processes affect educational institutions. Explores the manifest and latent functions of education in modern society; the role education plays in stratification and social reproduction; the relationship between education and cultural capital; the dynamics of race, class, and gender in education; and other topics. This course originates in Sociology and is crosslisted with: Education. (Same as: SOC 2206)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester

Explores the relationship between education and being/becoming human. Topics may be guided by the questions: What does it mean to be an educated person? How can education lead to emancipation? How might teaching and learning lead to the good life? What is our responsibility to teach the next generation? Readings may include works by Hannah Arendt, John Dewey, W. E. B. Du Bois, Plato, Jacques Rancière, among others.

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester

Schools are sites where young people learn to do gender and sexuality through direct instruction, the hidden curriculum, and peer-to-peer learning. In schools, gender and sexuality are challenged, constrained, constructed, normalized, and performed. Explores instructional and curricular reforms that have attempted to address students and teachers sexual identities and behavior. Examines the effects of gender and sexual identity on students’ experience of school, their academic achievement, and the work of teaching. Topics may include compulsory heterosexuality in the curriculum, the gender of the good student and good teacher, sex ed in an age of abstinence. This course originates in Education and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St. (Same as: GSWS 2282)

Examines the relationship between education, citizenship, and democracy in America. Questions explored include: What does public mean and how necessary is a public to democracy? Is there something democratic about how Americans choose to govern their schools? What does citizenship mean? Is education a public good with a collective economic and civic benefit, a private good with benefits to individuals whose future earnings depend on the quality of their education, or some combination of the two? What type of curriculum is most important for civic education and how should it be taught? What policies are necessary to prevent economic inequality from undermining education’s role in fostering democratic citizenship? To what extent are the concepts of education for democracy and democratic education related?

This course introduces the foundations of adolescent development and educational psychology. We examine topics such as identity development, cognitive development, social and cultural approaches to learning, risk taking, resilience, and positive youth development for young people ages 10-19. Course concepts and theories will be grounded in empirical research and will be applied to understanding contemporary opportunities and challenges faced by adolescent learning in both school and out-of-school environments. Insights for the ways in which educators can design learning experiences to better serve students’ needs from a variety of backgrounds will be cultivated through a field placement working with students. This course originates in Education and is crosslisted with: Psychology. (Same as: PSYC 2012)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

A study of the impact of the American legal system on the functioning of schools in the United States through an examination of Supreme Court decisions and federal legislation. Analyzes the public policy considerations that underlie court decisions in the field of education and considers how those judicial interests may differ from the concerns of school boards, administrators, and teachers. Issues to be discussed include constitutional and statutory developments affecting schools in such areas as free speech, sex discrimination, religious objections to compulsory education, race relations, teachers’ rights, school financing, and the education of those with disabilities. This course originates in Government and Legal Studies and is crosslisted with: Education. (Same as: GOV 2024)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester

Why do all Americans need to learn science and what are we doing to improve science education in our schools? With the release of the Next Generation Science Standards and in response to America’s poor standing on international assessments of math and science, there has been a shift in public interest and dialogue around why and how we teach science that is reminiscent of the late 1950s after the Soviet launch of Sputnik. Considers the goals of science education in the United States and explores research and policy related to science curriculum, teaching practice, and student learning.

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

Approaches urban schools and communities as sites of promise and innovation as well as social and political struggle. Examines the significance of community organizing as a form of education and the role of community organizing to improve, defend, and transform urban schools. Engages in major debates around urban education through readings and films. Features the perspectives of leading education researchers, policymakers, community organizers, and teacher scholars. Includes discussions of popular education, parent trigger laws, privatization, social movement unionism, and culturally-sustaining educational programming. This course originates in Education and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: URBS 2272)

Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester

Explores higher education in the contemporary United States through a sociological lens, highlighting the ways that colleges and universities both promote social mobility and perpetuate inequality. Examines the functions of higher education for students and society; issues of inequality in college access, financing, campus experiences, and outcomes later in life; the challenges and benefits of diversity and inclusion; and other topics, with special attention across all topics to the case of African Americans. This course originates in Sociology and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Education. (Same as: SOC 2330, AFRS 2330)

Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester

What roles have colleges and universities in the United States played over time? This course examines the social, political, and economic tensions that transformed higher education from a collection of small, narrowly defined, postsecondary institutions in the eighteenth century into a vast, multipurpose educational enterprise in contemporary society. The course emphasizes writing as a process and incorporates instruction in research-driven writing leading to students completing a major research project. (IRBW)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester

Explores how adolescents’ literacies intersect with social identities, discourses, and power. Examines youths’ literacy practices including reading in schools, digital composing on social media platforms, and embodied performances through table-top roleplaying games. Particular attention is paid to how literacies are intertwined with systems of race, class, gender, and sexuality in schools and across communities. Draws on a range of analytic tools including those from education, anthropology, sociology, literary studies, linguistics, and computational studies as well as theories of aesthetics, semiotics, and criticality.

Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester

Examines sociological theories of organizational change, applied within and beyond the study of higher education. Centering debates about racialized inequities in the contemporary United States, topics include how and why colleges are structured and restructured over time; how individuals—such as students, faculty, and administrators—matter within those structures; the role of organizational culture, symbols, and messaging; and struggles for power, status, and legitimacy. Using Bowdoin College as a case study, students will spend a significant portion of the course working in the college archives to investigate how policies related to racialized inclusion and exclusion have played into organizational changes since 1950. Areas of study may include admissions, athletics, housing and fraternities, leadership and funding, faculty and curriculum, and student activism. This course originates in Sociology and is crosslisted with: Education. (Same as: SOC 2335)

Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester

Investigates transformations in practices, definitions, and institutions of Islamic education in the aftermath of colonialism. Considers the question of religious authority and how changes in education, technology, and communications in the twentieth century expanded how Islamic knowledge was interpreted and transmitted. Reflects on the relationship between religious and secular knowledge, the role of the modern state and religious scholars, the rise of Muslim reform movements, and the question of gender. Begins with an examination of the evolution of Muslim education in the formative, medieval and early modern periods. Case studies include Egypt, South Asia, Iran, Yemen, and Morocco. This course originates in Middle Eastern and North African Studies and is crosslisted with: Education. (Same as: MENA 2366)

Terms offered: 2025 Fall Semester

A study of what takes place in classrooms: the methods and purposes of teachers, the response of students, and the organizational context. Readings and discussions help inform students’ direct observations and written accounts of local classrooms. Peer teaching is an integral part of the course experience. Requires a minimum of thirty-six hours of observation in a local secondary school. Education 3302 must be taken concurrently with this course. In order to qualify for this course students must have Education 1101 and 2203; junior or senior standing; a concentration in a core secondary school subject area (English: four courses in English; foreign language: four courses in the language; life science: four courses in biology; mathematics: four courses in mathematics; physical science: three courses in chemistry, earth and oceanographic science, or physics and one course in one of the other departments listed; or social studies: two courses in history and two courses in anthropology, economics, government, history, psychology or sociology. Permission of the instructor.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

A study of the knowledge taught in schools; its selection and the rationale by which one course of study rather than another is included; its adaptation for different disciplines and for different categories of students; its cognitive and social purposes; the organization and integration of its various components. Education 3301 must be taken concurrently with this course. In order to qualify for this course, students must have Education 1101 and 2203; junior or senior standing; and a concentration in a core secondary school subject area (English: four courses in English; foreign language: four courses in the language; life science: four courses in biology; mathematics: four courses in mathematics; physical science: three courses in chemistry, earth and oceanographic science, or physics and one course in one of the other departments listed; or social studies: two courses in history and two courses in anthropology, economics, government, history, psychology, or sociology). Permission of the instructor.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Required of all students who seek secondary public school certification, this final course in the student teaching sequence requires that students work full time in a local secondary school from early January to late April. Grading is Credit/D/Fail. Education 3304 must be taken concurrently. Students must complete an application and interview. Students with the following are eligible for this course: Education 2203, 3301 , and 3302; junior or senior standing; a cumulative 3.0 grade point average; a 3.0 grade point average in Education 3301 and 3302; and eight courses in a subject area that enables them to be certified by the State of Maine (English: eight courses in English; world language: eight courses in the language; life science: six courses in biology and two additional courses in biology, biochemistry, or neuroscience; mathematics: eight courses in mathematics; physical science: six courses in chemistry, earth and oceanographic science, or physics, and one course in each of the other departments listed; or social studies: six courses in history (at least two must be non-United States history) and one course each in two of the following departments: anthropology, economics, government, psychology, or sociology).

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

Taken concurrently with Education 3303, Student Teaching Practicum. Considers theoretical and practical issues related to effective classroom instruction. Students with the following are eligible for this course: Education 2203, 3301, and 3302; junior or senior standing; a cumulative 3.0 grade point average; a 3.0 grade point average in Education 3301 and 3302; and eight courses in a subject area that enables them to be certified by the State of Maine (English: eight courses in English; world language: eight courses in the language; life science: six courses in biology and two additional courses in biology, biochemistry, or neuroscience; mathematics: eight courses in mathematics; physical science: six courses in chemistry, earth and oceanographic science, or physics, and one course in each of the other departments listed; or social studies: six courses in history (at least two must be non-United States history) and one course each in two of the following departments: anthropology, economics, government, psychology, or sociology).

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

Draws together different theoretical, policy, and practice perspectives in education in the United States around a specific topic of inquiry determined by the instructor. Examines methodological perspectives in the field, e.g., quantitative, qualitative, and humanistic research. Students read original, contemporary research and develop skills to communicate with various educational stakeholders.

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

Seminar. Examines the theoretical and empirical analysis of education decision-making and the consequences of educational choices using an economic lens. Begins with the basic human capital model and expands on it to consider signaling, the interplay between ability and human capital, modeling expectations, and the many challenges of measuring the rate of return to educational investment. Educational policies from preschool to graduate studies are also considered, including the public funding of education, class size, and outcome testing. Examples are drawn from both developed and developing countries. This course originates in Economics and is crosslisted with: Education. (Same as: ECON 3535)

Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester