OISE Courses

This course develops an awareness of and practice in the arts as a means of personal development and as a learning technique. The philosophy and practice of Dance and Drama in education will be explored. The possibilities of conceptual development and expansion of THE CREATIVE PROCESS through the art of Dance and Drama with a particular focus on the cognitive, social, and artistic development of the child.

This course is designed to assist teachers in the Primary/Junior Division in the development, implementation and assessment/evaluation of Dance and Drama focused learning experiences. Candidates will participate in work that involves games, movement, tableau, role-playing, storytelling, playmaking, writing in role, improvisation, interpretation and presentation. They will learn to explore the elements of dance through creative movement that may be inspired by picture books, visual images, and artworks and music. Candidates will also explore various forms of global dance and genres.

Current theories of arts in education will be incorporated as participants plan drama lessons, consider expectation(s) and implement assessment strategies as outlined in the Ministry documents. The use of Dance, Drama and Music as art forms as well as an INTEGRATIVE methodology for learning across the curriculum will provide a framework for the course.

As a part of the Curriculum & Instruction course, this module is designed to introduce you to strategies and approaches for teaching Visual Arts Education to Primary and/or Junior learners. This course is designed to help OISE MT students (re)discover the theory and practice of Art Education, as well as understand and apply the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for effective teaching and learning that meets the diverse needs of students. Over the course you will become more competent and confident in working with learning tools and resources in each of these areas of the curriculum; developing lesson themes and ideas; and devising questions and learning activities for students. You will become familiar with the Ontario Ministry of Education curriculum policy documents: The Arts (2009), core concepts and teaching techniques, methods for integrating Art Education with other disciplines, including social justice, environmental education and indigenous approaches to knowing. Current ways of thinking about and teaching Art Education may differ significantly from when beginning teachers were students; therefore one of the aims of the course is to introduce new ways of thinking about these disciplines and their role in contemporary approaches to teaching and learning methodology for learning across the curriculum will provide a framework for the course.

As a part of the Curriculum & Instruction course, this module is designed to introduce you to strategies and approaches for teaching Health & Physical Education (HPE) to Primary and/or Junior learners. This course is designed to help OISE MT students (re)discover the theory and practice of HPE, as well as understand and apply the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for effective teaching and learning that meets the diverse needs of students. Over the course you will become more competent and confident in working with learning tools and resources in each of these areas of the curriculum; developing lesson themes and ideas; and devising questions and learning activities for students. You will become familiar with the Ontario Ministry of Education curriculum policy documents: The Health & Physical Education (2010), core concepts and teaching techniques, methods for integrating HPE with other disciplines, including social justice, environmental education and indigenous approaches to knowing. Current ways of thinking about and teaching HPE may differ significantly from when beginning teachers were students; therefore one of the aims of the course is to introduce new ways of thinking about these disciplines and their role in contemporary approaches to teaching and learning.

This second year course provides supervised experience in an area of fieldwork, under the direction of faculty and field personnel. Teacher candidates are placed in partnership schools in public and separate school systems and in other settings that use the Ontario curriculum. Teacher Candidates are under the joint supervision of a field teacher on site and an academic staff member at OISE. The teacher candidates will have one placement in each of their divisions. This course is normallyopen only to students in the Teaching program.

The Master of Teaching Research Project is designed to provide a deeper exploration of the interrelationships between educational theory, research, and practice. The overarching goal of this project is to engage students in an in-depth analysis of issues related to curriculum, teaching, and learning through systematic research. The MTRP has value both for students who are intending to pursue a career in classroom teaching, and for students who are planning to pursue doctoral studies. The Project involves the identification of a research problem, a literature review, data collection, data analysis, the construction of a formal report, which is published in a public online repository, and a formal presentation. As part of this process, students develop a variety of research-related skills, including the ability to formulate effective research questions, conduct interviews, review the academic and professional literatures, analyze data, and present research findings.

This course equips students with the math knowledge and skills needed by Primary/Junior and Junior/Intermediate teachers. A strong foundation in math content knowledge is necessary for teachers to build pedagogical content knowledge capacities. Students will develop an understanding of numeracy concepts in: quantity relationships, operational sense and proportional reasoning. The course will build on problem solving content skills in multiplication, division, order of operations, fractions, decimals, percentages, ratios, integers, exponents, manipulating expressions and solving algebraic equations. Students will be immersed in meta-cognition as math learners and will reflect on their own math strengths, needs and learning styles. The course will offer various math pedagogies, such as math games and hands-on activities suitable for elementary classes. At the beginning of the course, teacher candidates may opt into taking a math proficiency test geared at the grade 8 and 9 level. Students who earn a minimum achievement of 90% on the test will earn an immediate CR grade for CTL 7100H and will be excused from the remainder of the course. This test is most appropriate for teacher candidates who have a major or minor in math for their undergraduate degree.

This course, in conjunction with appropriate research methods coursework, provides doctoral students interested in policy analysis and program evaluation in education with a working understanding of the conceptual, methodological, ethical and political issues associated with these forms of research. Course topics include problem framing; use of existing research evidence; issues associated with different audiences and settings such as writing, presentation and evidence styles; policy advocacy; and working relationships with partners and clients. Visits by additional Collaborative Specialization-affiliated faculty from across OISE home programs will ensure that students are exposed to a range of contrasting research conventions and styles. Major assignments for the class will consist of carrying out some of the aspects of an applied research project.

This course, in conjunction with appropriate research methods coursework, provides doctoral students interested in policy analysis and program evaluation in education with a working understanding of the conceptual, methodological, ethical and political issues associated with these forms of research. Course topics include problem framing; use of existing research evidence; issues associated with different audiences and settings such as writing, presentation and evidence styles; policy advocacy; and working relationships with partners and clients. Visits by additional Collaborative Program-affiliated faculty from across OISE home programs will ensure that students are exposed to a range of contrasting research conventions and styles. Major assignments for the class will consist of carrying out some of the aspects of an applied research project.

This course will give students an opportunity to address issues that have both theoretical resonance and practical relevance for them. Beginning with a review of the Canadian postsecondary context and international comparisons, we then consider appropriate methods and theories for studying the graduate student experience. We proceed to a series of topics that relate to graduate programs and degrees, drawing on the research literature. These topics focus on issues that arise as students navigate through programs and into 'life after graduate school', including identity, writing, classroom experiences, disciplinary differences, the 'hidden curriculum', and thesis supervision. Integrated into the course will be an opportunity to do some qualitative interviewing of other students. Equity issues and comparative perspectives will be found throughout the course readings.

This course enables students to take a close look, from a sociological perspective, at gender relations in higher education. The focus will be on women students and faculty members in universities and colleges, although it is understood that gender operates in tandem with race, class, age, sexual orientation and other sources of identity and positioning. We will consider questions of access, representation, experience, and career; look at efforts to alter curriculum and pedagogy in accordance with ideas about women's needs or feminist process; and review feminist and other critiques of the purposes and cultures of the university. Specific topics such as student cultures, thesis supervision, sexual harassment, the "chilly climate," and so forth will be taken up through readings and student presentations.

This course provides an introduction to quantitative methods of inquiry and a foundation for more advanced courses in applied statistics for students in education and social sciences. The course covers univariate and bivariate descriptive statistics; an introduction to sampling, experimental design and statistical inference; contingency tables and Chi-square; t-test, analysis of variance, and regression. Students will learn to use SPSS software. At the end of the course, students should be able to define and use the descriptive and inferential statistics taught in this course to analyze real data and to interpret the analytical results.

This course will cover: survey sampling, experimental design, and power analysis; analysis of variance for one-way and multi-way data with fixed, mixed, and random effects models; linear and multiple regression; multiple correlation; analysis of covariance.

An exploration of the history and current use of survey research in educational leadership and policy. Topics will include an assessment of the strengths and limitations of the method survey, the selection of samples, questionnaire design, standard measurement instruments used in the field, methods of data analysis (with a focus on using SPSS), the drawing of causal inferences, and presentation of results in a clear and effective manner.

This is an intermediate applied statistics course designed for students who have already taken one course in elementary concepts (e.g., sampling and statistical inference). The course covers the use, interpretation, and presentation of bivariate and multivariate linear regression models, curvilinear regression functions, dummy and categorical variables, and interactions; as well as model selection, assumptions, and diagnostics. Examples and assignments will draw from commonly-used large-scale educational datasets. Students are encouraged to use Stata; the course will also serve as an introduction to this software package (students may instead choose to use SPSS or other software they are familiar with). The objective of the course is to equip students with the skills to use, interpret and write about regression models in their own research.

Mixed methods research is increasingly being used as an alternative to the traditional mono-method ways of conceiving and implementing inquiries in education and social sciences. In conceptualizing mixed methods studies, various paradigmatic assumptions are still being debated. However, many researchers have stated that the paradigmatic differences have been overdrawn and that paradigmatic incompatibility makes dialogue among researchers less productive. Researchers further acknowledge that philosophical differences are reconcilable through new guiding paradigms that actively embrace and promote mixing methods. Mixed methods researchers reject traditional dualism and prefer action to philosophizing by privileging inquiry questions over assumptive worlds. In this course, students will be introduced to various mixed methods design alternatives that allow researchers to link the purpose of the research to methodologies and integrate findings from mixed methods. This course covers various phases of mixed methods research, including theoretical frameworks of mixed methods research designs, strategic mixed methods sampling, data collection methods, integrative data analysis strategies, and a mixed methods research proposal. This is a doctoral level course designed to serve students who plan to conduct independent research. I anticipate that students will have had prior research experience or course work in research methods.

This course is designed to provide students with a working knowledge of the concepts related to systematic review and meta-analysis and develop their skills in this research methodology. Specifically, this course covers the topics of formulating the research questions that can be answered with systematic reviews, perform the literature search, select the studies and critically evaluate them using the quality, inclusion and exclusion criteria, extract data on key elements of the studies, outcomes and relevant statistics, compute and convert various effect size indices, synthesize the results of the studies with meta-analysis techniques, and present the results. The focus of the course is both methodological and practical.

Special topics courses designed to permit the study (in a formal class setting) of advanced quantitative research methods.

The purpose of this course is to examine the relationship between ideologies and practices of language and nation, from the period of the rise of the nation-State in the 19th century to current social changes related to the globalized new economy which challenge prevailing ideas about language and nation. We will focus in particular on language as a technique of regimentation, which helps produce and police populations; and as a terrain of struggle over access to and legitimation of relations of authority, power and inequality. We will examine European nationalism and its ties to colonialism, industrial capitalism, liberal democracy and modernity. We will then move to reactions to it in the form of linguistic minority movements, international auxiliary languages, fascism (in particular Nazism), and Communism. We will then touch briefly on the post WWII period, and focus the rest of the course on contemporary conditions of late capitalism, since the late 1980s, with a focus on the commodification of language and identity in the current economy; language and globalization; and current debates on the ecology of language and language endangerment. Throughout we will also examine the role of linguists, anthropologists and other producers of discourse about language, nation and State in the construction of theories of nation, ethnicity, race and citizenship.

The anthropological perspective of the ethnography of communication will be adopted to study the relationship between language use, social relations, culture and learning in and out of schools. The course will deal with the nature and origin of cultural differences in language use and patterns and social interactional styles; with the consequences of those differences for school performance; and with the usefulness of the ethnography of communication as both a research and a pedagogical tool in the development of curricula and teaching practices that account for such differences. The ethnography of communication will also be interpreted in the light of political economic perspectives on the issue of sociolinguistic diversity and educational success.

A seminar examining the strategies, techniques, and problems involved in the conduct of research in educational administration. This seminar prepares the student for defining research problems, reviewing relevant literature, writing research proposals, conducting research and writing reports in educational administration. During this course the student will prepare the proposal for their Major Research Paper.

The goals of this course are to provide students with an introduction to the purposes of research in educational leadership and policy and to assist students in learning how to obtain, evaluate, interpret, and use research in their work as educators and in their graduate studies. Possible topics include: overview of different research paradigms and research strategies used in studies of policy, leadership, and change; how to critically analyze the strengths and weakness of research; how to conduct a review of literature and build a bibliography; dissemination of research; the connections between research, policy, and practice; the role of research and evaluation departments; leadership roles in sponsoring, directing, using, and communicating research.

An analysis of the organizational culture of educational organizations. The implications for action resulting from research and theory relating to organizational culture are examined. Case studies and field experiences are used as bases for the analysis of decision-making within the context of specific organizational cultures.