Education Policy and Social Foundations

Emphasis under revision, see department for additional information.

Educational Policy and Social Foundations (EPSF) emphasizes research and theory in the context of classroom and field application. The student’s course of study in EPSF generally culminates in an intensive research project (EDLF 698R) or final oral examination dependent on option of thesis (EDLF 699R).

The program is for applicants interested in the following areas of inquiry:

Education Policy
Language Policy
Philosophy of Education
Sociology of Education
History of Education
Religious Education

A. The Program

EPSF aims to provide students with structured and principled ways of investigating education and schooling as a process that occurs within broader social, legal, political and cultural contexts. Many factors are: lack of adequate housing and health care, crime, racism, socioeconomic inequality, prejudicial language policies, lack of a viable educational philosophy at policy and implementation levels, family, cultural and religious issues. These and other factors not often considered in the creation of programs for educational reform affect the ability of children to learn, the quality of their education, and ultimately the society whose dynamics schooling both reflects and helps to shape.

B. Program Objectives

The EPSF program focuses on exploring the above-mentioned contextual issues in depth, for policy makers and educational leaders cannot responsibly ignore these broader determinants of the quality and equality of educational policies and practices. This is especially true because uninformed strategies for reforming public schools tend to have varying and inequitable, effects on students from differing racial, ethnic, gender, linguistic, economic, religious and ideological backgrounds. It is hoped that EPSF students who already are or will someday be parents, teachers, educational leaders, and policy makers will leave the program with the knowledge, skills and dispositions necessary to make a positive difference in addressing some of the above mentioned problems. With this charge to study education and educational communities and processes, students in EPSF will develop a critical understanding of reform movements. The program prepares students to analyze educational policies and laws to discover fundamental themes, truths, or values they may use to understand education and refine their own sense of mission to seek true educational reform that avoids unproductive fads, and produces lasting improvements in schools that serve all children well.

The EPSF emphasis prepares students to utilize educational history as prologue to current issues and reforms and analyzes educational policies to discover both explicit and implicit agendas and intended and unintended consequences. Students will explore what counts as “knowledge”, and what political purposes (and contradictions) any given educational policy embodies.

Armed with these approaches to the analysis of education, the EPSF student qua student, teacher and scholar is better able in classroom, school, and society to promote schooling and education that is intellectually, emotionally, and politically liberating for all children.

To this end, the curriculum of the EPSF program aims to:

Provide students with knowledge of the most important sociological, historical, and philosophical models for understanding how US education has evolved and how it presently operates.

Sensitize students to the major legal issues involved in both the practice and reform of current US education.

Build students’ technical competence in the basic tools of research, analysis, and effective design and implementation of educational policy.

Enhance critical awareness of the dynamics of educational change at the local and national levels.

Develop research and evaluation skills which could be applied in students’ future professional settings.

C. The Classroom Experience in EPSF

The EPSF, although suitable for students at various points in their professional development, is particularly sensitive to the requirements of mid-career professionals, who already are or wish to become involved in a wide variety of educational issues. The classes are generally carried on as structured seminar discussion, in which all course members participate. Students are able to pursue specialist interests through appropriately designed reading and project work supported by individual tutorials.

D. Degree Requirements

The M.Ed. in EPSF requires the completion of a minimum of 42 semester hours of graduate level course work (including thesis or final project) with a 3.0 GPA. Typically a course meeting once a week throughout the semester is three credits. A maximum of six (6) semester hours of graduate work may be transferred to the program from other universities upon approval by the Master’s Program Committee. The 42 semester hours are to be completed in accordance with the program curriculum.

M. ED PROGRAM OF STUDY