Education · Race · American politics
Teaching
Undergraduate and graduate courses in education, curriculum, and the history and politics of schooling.
Current undergraduate courses
White Backlash in American Politics
EDI 3939 · Upper-division undergraduate · 3 credits
Examines the politics of white backlash in the post–civil rights era through a historical case study of Georgia Governor Lester G. Maddox. Analyzes how racial politics, schooling, and governance intersected in struggles over desegregation, privatization, and democracy.
Teacher Learning Community Seminar with Field Experience (Phase I)
EDUC 1025 · Undergraduate · 2 credits
Introduces collaborative inquiry and reflective practice as foundations of teacher preparation. Students participate in guided field experiences across multiple school settings while developing tools for observation, reflection, and professional collaboration.
Introduction to Teaching: Sense of Context
EDUC 1030 · Undergraduate · 1 credit
Explores context as a core element of teaching and learning. Students analyze how identity, power, place, and institutional structures shape schools and educational opportunity.
Big Ideas: Literacy and Social Studies (Birth–Grade 12)
EDUC 2100 · Undergraduate · 3 credits
Investigates literacy and social studies as disciplines concerned with meaning-making, citizenship, and democratic life. Examines curriculum, standards, and instructional practices across grade levels, integrating classroom field experiences with inquiry into identity and purpose.
Curricular Foundations of Disciplinary Literacy (Grades 4–12)
EDUC 3500 · Undergraduate · 3 credits
Focuses on curriculum design and disciplinary literacy in grades 4–12. Students critique standards, analyze texts, and develop instructional materials that integrate literacy and social studies through field-based lesson planning and assessment.
Current graduate courses
Curriculum Theory
EDI 6460 · Graduate seminar · (credits vary by program)
A seminar exploring major approaches to curriculum theory, its historical development, and contemporary debates about what counts as knowledge in schools. Students develop theoretical tools for evaluating curricular claims, identify silenced traditions (including scholars of color), and produce scholarly writing grounded in curriculum studies.
Foundations of Urban Education
EDF 5600 · Graduate course · (summer offering)
Examines the social, political, and economic contexts shaping schooling in urban spaces, with attention to housing, racial segregation, access, governance, and finance. Students analyze how metropolitan inequality is produced historically and through policy—and what these dynamics mean for educational opportunity and equity.
Earlier graduate courses
Qualitative Research in Education
EDR 5400
Introduces theoretical, epistemological, and methodological foundations of qualitative research. Students design qualitative research projects, practice data collection and analysis, and examine the politics of knowledge production in educational research.
Education in American Culture
EDF 6600
Analyzes how social, political, and economic structures shape schooling in the United States, with emphasis on race, segregation, housing policy, and metropolitan inequality. Uses American education as a lens for understanding broader cultural and structural forces.
History of American Education
EDI 6650
Surveys the history of American schooling from the colonial era to the present, emphasizing race, power, and the relationship between education and the modern state. Students engage historiography, primary sources, and policy history to connect past educational struggles to contemporary debates.
Earlier undergraduate courses
Elementary Methods of Teaching Social Studies
EDI 3070
Introduced preservice teachers to the purposes, politics, and practices of elementary social studies. Emphasized citizenship, justice, curriculum design, and inquiry-based instruction through field-based lesson planning and teaching.
Middle School Social Studies Methods & Practicum
EDI 3540 / 3545
Focused on social studies pedagogy for grades 5–9, integrating methods coursework with supervised field experiences. Examined citizenship, power, curriculum, and instructional decision-making in middle school contexts.
School and Community
EDF 3890
Explored the relationships among schools, families, and communities, with attention to identity, housing policy, segregation, and local context. Emphasized community-based inquiry and critical reflection as foundations for equitable teaching.