Special Topic Course Descriptions (Fall/Winter)

This course will review the theory and techniques of family therapy. It will provide an introduction to some of the main concepts for case formulation when treating families and illustrate different ways of working with family constellations. Some of the major theories that will be covered include systemic, structural and attachment based family therapy. The concepts and techniques will be illustrated with case studies and videos.

This course explores a range of theories of personality development, including what it means to become a fully mature and flourishing person, and what this means for theories of education. In particular, whether different kinds or personality need to be educated differently, and whether education can contribute to personal flourishing and maturity. These questions will be considered in light of historical discussions of personality, character and self development.

This course explores the impact of privilege, power, and oppression on the lived experiences of people living in North America (with a focus on Canada and the United States). Using an anti-colonial, intersectional, and abolitionist theoretical frameworks, students will examine and critique individual and systemic systems of oppression. Topics covered include class, race, racism, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, and radical healing from systems of oppression. The goal of this course is to help students think critically about the social structures that impact the lives of those they serve in the context of psychology and education.

This course will explore theory and implications of anti-Black racism from childhood to emerging adulthood. Topics will include: overview of recent scholarship in critical race theory and systems of oppression, models of racial identity development, concepts of power and privilege, exploration of the socio-emotional and socio-cultural experiences of Black children, adolescents, emerging adults and their families, and examination of the role of anti-Black racism in the development of psychological problems. Students will be introduced to a range of strategies for psychology and educational practice with racialized children, youth, emerging adults and families. The possibilities and challenges of applying anti-racist approaches to foster resilience in these populations will be explored.

Seminar course on the neuroscience of reading and reading disorders. Topics include review of healthy/typical reading development and disorders of reading in childhood, theories of dyslexia, brain bases of literacy and current neuroimaging research in reading development and disorders, cross-linguistic and bilingual reading development, and global literacy.

Designed for students with a background in psychology and education, this course focuses on the practical applications of machine learning within these fields. Students will explore supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms and techniques for handling multimodal data types, such as text. The course emphasizes real-world applications, with examples and case studies from psychology and education, enabling students to appreciate the transformative potential of machine learning.

This is an advanced statistical and psychometric methods course. Students will learn and apply various multivariate modeling approaches to complex data from educational and psychological research. The course has three sections: 1) design and analysis of educational and psychological assessments, including reliability, validity, differential item functioning, classical test theory, item response theory, and scaling; 2) measurement and structural modeling using factor analytic and structural equation modeling; and 3) classification methods using cluster analysis and latent class/profile modeling. Students are welcome to bring their projects to apply techniques to empirical data. The course will use computational software such as Stata, MPlus, SPSS, and R.

This special topics course will provide students to investigate questions about creativity as related to curriculum, teaching, and learning in the arts, as well as all school subject areas. Conceptualizations, processes, measurement/assessment, and the myths of creativity will be investigated. Students will explore ideas and issues of creativity related to their personal, academic, and professional lives. \n\nSpecial Topics course created by Leslie Stewart Rose.

This special topics course will provide students with the opportunity to investigate current topic and issues in music education as related to social justice and the profession’s shifting paradigms. Topics include issues related to concepts such as creativity, aesthetics, culture and the musician, as well as issues of access, representation, colonization, and identity. Discussions will be related to the related philosophical, ethical, and practical dilemmas faced by the field of curriculum, teaching and learning in music education.

This course draws from the field of Maternal Pedagogies, an area of inquiry that examines the relationship between mothering, teaching, and learning, and promotes various forms of agency, advocacy, and activism. Indigenous Maternal Pedagogies include women-centred Indigenous epistemologies that embrace the whole student within educational contexts and draw from an Indigenous women-centred worldview to establish a teaching and learning environment that can speak to the hearts and minds of students. This course provides a unique pedagogical framework that encourages anti-racist and ethical dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous learners. Through scholarly material along with Indigenous narratives and storywork, topics will include: colonial histories, moving beyond empathy to teach about residential schools, ongoing structural violence, and the overrepresentation of children in care. Contemporary resistance movements and resilience frameworks will also be discussed along with ongoing conversations of current community experiences. Students will consider this praxis as a starting for Indigenizing classroom spaces; one that is rooted in localized community knowledges.

This graduate level course is designed to examine conceptual, epistemological, political, cultural, methodological and ethical insights, opportunities and challenges faced and addressed by OISEUT’s prospective students and graduates during their learning about and carrying out of both qualitative and quantitative research as well as knowledge production work in non-western, developing countries’ contexts. The course’s ultimate focus suggests the analysis of the connections between the overall research and knowledge production experiences, the various forces that imping upon them and how all these relate to curriculum, teaching and learning, as well as policy making, broadly conceptualized and practically grounded in the participants’ particular contexts.

This course is designed for teachers interested in current research, theory and approaches related to introducing mindfulness in classroom settings. Graduate students will (1) examine theoretical and research trends in the field; (2) develop trauma-sensitive approaches to teaching and practicing mindfulness; (3) deepen understanding about the connection between social justice advocacy and mindfulness in and as education; (4) explore mindfulness-based practices for cultivating present awareness (as well as self-compassion, gratitude, kindness, attention, emotion regulation, mental health and well-being); (5) consider contextual factors impacting educator and student wellness; and (6) engage in embodied practices as an experiential way of exploring mindfulness.

This course is designed for teachers interested in current research, theory and approaches related to introducing mindfulness in classroom settings. Graduate students will (1) examine theoretical and research trends in the field; (2) develop trauma-sensitive approaches to teaching and practicing mindfulness; (3) deepen understanding about the connection between social justice advocacy and mindfulness in and as education; (4) explore mindfulness-based practices for cultivating present awareness (as well as self-compassion, gratitude, kindness, attention, emotion regulation, mental health and well-being); (5) consider contextual factors impacting educator and student wellness; and (6) engage in embodied practices as an experiential way of exploring mindfulness.

This course will examine research related to STEM education and implications for teaching and learning. We will explore local initiatives that might be familiar to teachers and those in other professional fields, interdisciplinarity, models of subject integration, assessment, and formal and informal contexts for learning. The course will encourage links with local organizations by inviting guest speakers and requiring students to make at least one field visit (to the ROM, Ontario Science Centre, etc.)

This course explores the fundamentals of game theory & research related to games & learning. Through theoretical readings, case studies, critical analysis and design exercises, the learning potential within games will be explored. Important elements of games such as goal setting, feedback loops, self-assessment, motivation, and social learning will be investigated. A deep analysis of the \'situation game\' will be conducted. The main assignment involves the creation of an educational game to be beta-tested and developed. Creative and design processes will be discussed and provide guidance during game creation.

This course explores the fundamentals of game theory & research related to games & learning. Through theoretical readings, case studies, critical analysis and design exercises, the learning potential within games will be explored. Important elements of games such as goal setting, feedback loops, self-assessment, motivation, and social learning will be investigated. A deep analysis of the \'situation game\' will be conducted. The main assignment involves the creation of an educational game to be beta-tested and developed. Creative and design processes will be discussed and provide guidance during game creation.

Beginning with an exploration of the roots of critical literacy in the work of Paolo Freire, Miles Horton, and Donaldo Macedo, this course explores how critical literacy has been taken up by educators, in and out of formal school settings, historically and in contemporary educational contexts, in North America as well as globally. Weekly readings and examples highlight how k-adult teachers invite students, to paraphrase Freire, to critically read and rewrite their worlds, examine power relationships in society, understand the function of ideology in a wide range of texts, and situate their learning within broader political contexts. Conceptual and empirical readings will be accompanied by weekly examples of curriculum and pedagogical approaches.

Beginning with an exploration of the roots of critical literacy in the work of Paolo Freire, Miles Horton, and Donaldo Macedo, this course explores how critical literacy has been taken up by educators, in and out of formal school settings, historically and in contemporary educational contexts, in North America as well as globally. Weekly readings and examples highlight how k-adult teachers invite students, to paraphrase Freire, to critically read and rewrite their worlds, examine power relationships in society, understand the function of ideology in a wide range of texts, and situate their learning within broader political contexts. Conceptual and empirical readings will be accompanied by weekly examples of curriculum and pedagogical approaches.

This course positions Indigenous literatures as both windows and mirrors that offer a glimpse or reflection into the realities of Indigenous experiences. For non-Indigenous readers, the window metaphorically provides a place to view and begin to understand authentic experiences and realities that may be quite different than their own. To promote an appreciation for Indigenous experiences as well as cross-cultural understandings between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, the window becomes a space for bearing witness and truth telling. For Indigenous readers who may find personal connections, the literature serves as a mirror that reflects their realities. Within that mirror, readers not only see the lingering effects of colonization but also resilience and personal triumphs. The courses give students an opportunity to make deeper connections to contemporary social justice issues. By highlighting the importance of implementing culturally relevant pedagogies in their own teaching, all students will be encouraged to engage in truth and reconciliation and consider opportunities for decolonizing and Indigenizing classroom spaces through literature.

This course offers an introduction to Indigenous research methodologies by emphasizing the ethical relationships and necessary protocols for engaging and enacting Indigenous research. Students will learn about Indigenous knowledges that have always governed research within Indigenous communities with consideration of how this relates to Indigenous worldviews (epistemologies, axiologies, and ontologies) as well as contemporary Indigenous research methods that are foundational to educational research within Indigenous communities. Students will also learn about the troubling history of outsider research that has been extractive and harmful to Indigenous communities. The course will offer an overview of ethical research protocols with Indigenous communities and students will understand the importance of engaging in ethical research that is reciprocal, respectful, and aligns with community desire. Finally students will consider what it means to engage in research that is done with and for Indigenous communities by learning about Indigenous Maternal Methodologies.

This course takes the 2019 coronavirus outbreak as a starting point from which to examine how the sociopolitical context of a so-called scientific issue can impact teaching and learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). You will have the opportunity to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted, and will continue to impact, the way we view STEM education. The (post) in the title of the course does not so much denote the idea that the pandemic is in the past, rather that the course relies on critical examination of STEM education in light of power structures and political influence in STEM education, as revealed by the pandemic. The course has a metacognitive focus where you are encouraged to reflect on your own learning processes as well as those of STEM learners in other contexts. The course is framed by the question: What are the likely short- and long-term impacts of COVID-19 on science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (STEM) education?

? In this course, we explore how numeracy (or mathematical literacy) can respond to contemporary social challenges. Numeracy refers to the ways in which mathematics is produced, used and perceived in everyday life contexts. This concept is particularly important with the rapid changes different societies around the world are going through: intensified technological advancements, changes in social relations, globalization of production systems, immigration and demographic shifts. These phenomena impose new demands - new competencies - to navigate a world embedded with social inequalities and contradictions. Throughout the course, we will touch upon the interactions between numeracy with digital, financial, environmental, data and media literacies. Topics to be explored include: conceptualizations of citizenship and numeracy; the relationship between mathematics and social life; neoliberalism, ideology and mathematics education, the rise of digital and knowledge economies; changes in how mathematics is used in the workplace; mathematics, consumption and the environment.

In this course, students will be introduced to applications of digital games and simulations for learning across contexts. A thorough examination of theoretical underpinnings and current approaches will guide students to apply their understanding by designing a prototype of an educational interactive knowledge game or simulation. Addressing issues of digital media design, students in collaborative groups will employ appropriate research methodologies and read relevant materials to carefully consider what makes a compelling game or simulation for learning. Students will identify an educational need, define requirements, and develop a web-based interactive game/simulation to meet them. Students will conduct play testing and finally build a semi-functional prototype. The course does not require programming experience, but familiarity with web design, image rendering, and animation software could be an asset.

In this course, students will be introduced to applications of digital games and simulations for learning across contexts. A thorough examination of theoretical underpinnings and current approaches will guide students to apply their understanding by designing a prototype of an educational interactive knowledge game or simulation. Addressing issues of digital media design, students in collaborative groups will employ appropriate research methodologies and read relevant materials to carefully consider what makes a compelling game or simulation for learning. Students will identify an educational need, define requirements, and develop a web-based interactive game/simulation to meet them. Students will conduct play testing and finally build a semi-functional prototype. The course does not require programming experience, but familiarity with web design, image rendering, and animation software could be an asset.

This course is intended for students interested in research for queer & trans justice. Moving beyond studying LGBTQ2S+ identities, this course explores mobilizing queer & trans ways of knowing for praxis-centered research. Students will consider various ontological and epistemological commitments (and critiques) from queer and trans studies, including the tensions, contradictions and departures from traditional research practice. Students will also engage the lived experiences and cultural productions of queer & trans communities in the US and Canada as forms of knowledge production. This course will introduce students to queer & trans scholars who have developed innovative methodologies of praxis to work towards queer & trans liberation. Students will also develop a critical reflexive practice to consider their positionality and articulate a rationale for using queer & trans ways of knowing to support their own educational research.

The course aims at familiarizing doctoral and masters’ students with problems, methods and practices that are specific to mathematics education research. It pays careful attention to epistemological issues in research in mathematics education by engaging students in reading and discussing papers on mathematics education research and by focussing on how researchers address particular epistemological issues. It critically reviews relevant literature in mathematics education, theories, research designs, and methodologies used in published mathematics education research during the last 5 years, and leads to identification of problems for which research is needed. The course also describes the complexity of conducting research in mathematics education and how different methodologies approach such complexity. It will also include collaborative activities of various kinds, such as doing mathematics, defining terms, developing criteria to annotate research, evaluating evidence, designing research instruments, designing analytic protocols, and implementing those in research records. Group work will be encouraged throughout the course.

This course will examine theory, research and practice of early literacy assessment and instruction within the context of the reciprocal nature of reading, writing and oral language, particularly for young children who are lagging in their literacy progress. Graduate students will investigate: 1) how students become independent, active and constructive processors of any text; 2) strategies that support fluent reading; 3) how to engage students in conversations that support comprehension. This course will draw on the work of Marie Clay and Reading Recovery, and will include strategies for early intervention with young children who are struggling the most with reading and writing. Through case studies and applications of theory to practice, the course will focus on learning to implement and teach from assessment tools such as running records and letter, word and print concepts assessments. An examination of non-linear text and digital literacy will be considered. Teachers successfully completing the course will be prepared to use data to develop and implement theoretically-sound, practical and engaging interventions for individual students and implement classroom literacy programs for diverse students in inclusive environments in the early years.

The primary aim of this course is to enable students to develop a framework for describing the field of Vocabulary Acquisition and Teaching. To do so, (1) students will learn key theoretical concepts in the field of vocabulary teaching and learning (2), present and discuss the most relevant research methodologies in the field and (3) reflect on the effectiveness of didactic materials through language textbook analysis.

This course explores the theory and practice of community-engaged learning (CEL) in the fields of social/eco-justice education and global education. CEL integrates academic service learning, community-based placements, and reflection into powerful learning experiences that benefit both students and community partners. In this course, students will learn about the historical and conceptual foundations of CEL, and experience its opportunities and tensions firsthand in school and community settings. Students will identify and critically interrogate current educational research, practice, and policy in areas related to CEL, including experiential education, transformative learning, project-based education, place-based education, global education, and citizenship education. This course will use a combination of in-person classes, online learning, and a placement in a CEL setting (min. of 35 hours). Due to the school and/or community placement requirement, interested students must gain prior approval of the course instructor.

This course explores the theory and practice of community-engaged learning (CEL) in the fields of social/eco-justice education and global education. CEL integrates academic service learning, community-based placements, and reflection into powerful learning experiences that benefit both students and community partners. In this course, students will learn about the historical and conceptual foundations of CEL, and experience its opportunities and tensions firsthand in school and community settings. Students will identify and critically interrogate current educational research, practice, and policy in areas related to CEL, including experiential education, transformative learning, project-based education, place-based education, global education, and citizenship education. This course will use a combination of in-person classes, online learning, and a placement in a CEL setting (min. of 35 hours). Due to the school and/or community placement requirement, interested students must gain prior approval of the course instructor.

Candidates in this course will experience meaningful literacy and arts-based strategies designed to promote active, interactive instructional strategies that enrich communication, collaboration and compassion in the classroom. Resources, including children\'s literature, provide a framework for building community, confronting bullying and addressing tough topics to deepen student understanding of social justice, diversity and equity issues.

This course will provide a brave space for Black self-identified educators and practitioners to deconstruct what it means to be Black from an intersectional lens navigating power and the complexities affiliated with experiencing privilege and oppressions across different settings.  As an affinity group space, it provides opportunities for Black educators to share their lived experiences, build connections, and learn from other Black educators in a healing, empowered, culturally responsive, affirming, and sustaining space. The content of the course explores historical and current realities of Black educators from multiple vantage points, providing opportunities for reflection and action for creating and sustaining Black identities and communities.  An examination and creation of liberation and non-hegemonic pedagogies will guide Black educators in honing their skills through and decentering Eurocentrism, decolonization, critical pedagogy, advocacy and activism, leadership and change frameworks, and centering Black excellence and lived experiences. Finally, this course will provide an opportunity for critical conversations and intentional actions of hope and healing to sustain Black joy and reconsider what Black futurities in education should be. 

This course celebrates Asian Canadians by exploring and acknowledging their contributions to Canada. Asian Canadians have been in Canada since the 1700's and have built and lifted our nation in many valuable ways. The prevalence of anti-Asian racism has deep political, social, and economic roots in Canadian history. The contemporary manifestation of anti-Asian hate continues to impact Asian communities, affecting their health, well-being and safety. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this course aims to critically explore and examine Asian Canadian settler experiences within educational contexts while interrogating systemic racism and discrimination faced by Asian Canadian students and educators.

This course celebrates Asian Canadians by exploring and acknowledging their contributions to Canada. Asian Canadians have been in Canada since the 1700's and have built and lifted our nation in many valuable ways. The prevalence of anti-Asian racism has deep political, social, and economic roots in Canadian history. The contemporary manifestation of anti-Asian hate continues to impact Asian communities, affecting their health, well-being and safety. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this course aims to critically explore and examine Asian Canadian settler experiences within educational contexts while interrogating systemic racism and discrimination faced by Asian Canadian students and educators.

One of the most valuable things a K-12 teacher can know is how children learn. How do they acquire, process and retain new knowledge and skills? Understanding these processes will help you enhance your effectiveness in the classroom. Knowing the principles of learning is key to becoming an impactful educator. This course examines some of the major educational discoveries related to how people learn, and explores the implications of these discoveries for effective teaching practices. The course makes use of a textbook titled How Learning Happens: Seminal Works in Educational Psychology and What They Mean in Practice by Paul A. Kirschner and Carl Hendrick (2020). The book consists of 28 clearly-written, bite-sized chapters, each focusing on a significant research study. Each chapter summarizes the findings of a seminal study and discusses how teachers can apply these findings to enhance their teaching.

This online course (synchronous) is designed for graduate students in the Master of Teaching program who are interested in current research and approaches related to classroom neurodiversity and various accessible educational practices which support the inclusion and well-being of all learners. Graduate students will engage in ongoing critical reflection on current educational practices (including Universal Design for Learning and Differentiated Instruction) which support the holistic development of students. This course gives special consideration to the experiences of neurodivergent learners (e.g., autistic, ADHD, learning disabilities) and the various ways they learn. Through an accessibility lens, graduate students will examine inclusive, equitable pedagogical practices that benefit all learners and which build on student strengths and enhance student well-being and achievement. Course assignments include a group presentation on a neuro-normative practice and an individual or group project deconstructing a curriculum document from a neurodiversity-affirming perspective.

This course will explore theory-to-practice connections in teaching through a combination of classwork and site-based work at the University of Toronto Schools (UTS). Students in this course will have the opportunity to develop a range of qualitative and quantitative research skills suitable for engaging in practitioner-based inquiry within a school setting. There will be a particular focus on working as part of a team to develop an inquiry question that will be examined on site at UTS, with the research results being presented to the school\'s administration for consideration as part of their ongoing work on their strategic initiatives. Key themes that will be addressed in this course include: identity of the practitioner as researcher; research ethics considerations in practitioner inquiry; what counts as data in practitioner inquiry; conceptions of validity and generalizability in practitioner inquiry; and working within professional learning communities.

This course explores the relationship between abolitionist praxis and pedagogical practice. The course seeks to engage in both action and reflection of what it means to integrate abolitionist praxis into one?s pedagogical approach, particularly when doing educational work within carceral and punitive based spaces. The course will explore both the political commitments and the everyday practices of abolition in order to think critically about enacting abolitionist values in our teaching, research and scholarship. The course will focus on texts that explore historical and contemporary abolitionist struggles in the US and Canada, as well as weave in a process of reflexivity on how we are all impacted by carcerality and punitive based cultures. The aim of the course is to develop a critical analysis of systems of oppression that create and perpetuate the prison-industrial complex, as well as identify practices we can enact in our lives and classrooms that create a world free of carcerality, gender-based violence and anti-Black racism.\n\nAs the course title suggests, this course is not solely about developing a framework of an abolitionist pedagogy, rather there are many pedagogies that derive from abolitionist commitments and practice we will explore.\n

This advanced qualitative methods course explores the process and ethics of engaging in research with children and is grounded in the understanding that children have much to offer the world. As such, students will consider what the world is like for children while contemplating how children make meaning. Students will delve into exemplar studies from foundational and contemporary qualitative scholars, including guiding theories for working with and alongside children in fieldwork.

This course examines the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education. It considers scholarship on the philosophy of education, curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and evaluation. This is based on readings of major thinkers on the scholarship of teaching and learning: Piaget, Vygotsky, Skinner, Bloom, Ausubel, Mezirow, Schön, Papert, Boyer, Shulman, Wenger, Ramsden, Biggs, Laurillard, Darling-Hammond, and Hattie. The course develops skills in the methods of the scholarship of teaching and learning: reviewing the literature, evaluating teaching and learning, researching teaching and learning, and publishing on teaching and learning. Many readings are taken from Ramsden, P. (2003). Learning to teach in higher education (2nd edition). Routledge: London.

This course introduces the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education with a particular focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning in professional education. The course concentrates on teaching and learning issues distinctive of the professions most strongly represented in class, which are expected to be medicine, engineering, and student support. These would be considered as examples of different types of expert practitioners, which may be categorised by the type of their foundational knowledge (Bernstein), their type of problem solving (Schön), their signature pedagogy (Shulman), and their type of service (Abbott). The course considers distinctive issues for each profession’s distinctive pedagogies, such as practical classes, the case method, problem based learning, induction into a community of practice (Wenger), apprenticeship, and the various forms of work integrated learning.

This course focuses on understanding education policy development (decisions and implementation) in different jurisdictions and settings. By surveying different theoretical approaches, students will be able to analyze education policy decisions, examine implementation problems, and foresee limitations of proposed policies and programs in diverse settings. At the end of the course, students will:  - Develop a basic understanding of what we gain from comparing education policy across jurisdictions and/or time.  - Identify factors and processes that can produce or block changes in education policy.  - Identify factors and processes that can facilitate or constrain policy implementation.  - Use this knowledge to foresee challenges of specific education policies and analyze different policy options. 

This course provides educators and those seeking to understand the current state of education, with the necessary skills to understand, deconstruct and dismantle the convergence of systems of oppression in public schools through Critical Race Theory. Specifically, this course will prepare you to take a closer look at systems (schools, universities, organizations) in tandem with how you’re showing up as educators committed to equity on all levels within your sphere of influence. We will also take note of and begin to shift to (un)learn harmful ways of engaging as an educational leader (i.e., white supremacy culture of over-productivity and lack of self/community care), therefore shifting outcomes for students, especially those of historically marginalized and multiply-marginalized groups (i.e., Black, Indigenous, 2SLGBTQ+, those who are neuro-diverse). Students will have the chance to learn, process and practice meaningful decision-making skills along with, organizational, instructional, managerial and political high leverage pivots, that directly communicate your commitment to the work of anti-racism. We will delve into various schools of thought and concrete actions to move the agenda of equity forward as leaders, and collaborators. Particular attention will be given to diversity issues regarding race, culture, gender, age, social class, national origin, language, ancestry, sexual orientation, citizenship, and physical or mental abilities. Critical Race Theory continues to be a liberation-focused praxis that requires us to do better, once we know better and is only one way to view our current social, political and educational contexts.

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 Excel 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. No prior knowledge of statistics is required.

This course counters conventional approaches to the study and research of education policy by setting it against the dynamic and shifting context of policy enacted on the ground. Through critical policy sociology, it places emphasis on variables impacting teachers’ sensemaking as well as the negotiation, contestation, and struggle of actors outside of official processes to change the conditions of oppressive social practices and injustice in schooling.

This course offers a critical approach to evaluate the possibilities and limitations of online learning through the lens of pre and (post) pandemic education policies. A critical approach engages structures of power and the politics of choice and access; it holds tension between the promise of online schooling as revolutionary and the practice of online schooling as a site of social reproduction and injustice. Topics include but are not limited to product enabled surveillance, market-driven education reforms, social-stratification, and internationalization.

As situated in the contemporary and historical literatures of the studies in the field of Adult Education, the Race, Racisms and Adult Education course provides an overview of adult education literature related to race and racisms in the 20th and 21st centuries. In doing so, the course considers how race became incorporated as a key dimension of multicultural adult educa¬tion and highlights the con¬tributions by BIPOC scholars to adult education academic literature. Students will. examine studies of race and racisms in relation to empirical, theoretical and dialogic studies of adult learning and adult education teaching across a range of settings including formal education, corporate and community-based workplaces. Students will be encouraged to combine course assignments with insights from their existing research projects, employment experiences, goals and interests.

The content of this course focuses on work and learning dynamics within professional workplaces, and seeks to place these dynamics within their broader social, political, economic and historical context. Themes concerning professionalization, de-professionalization, professionalism, the nature of professional and/or expert knowledge, ethics, identity, knowledge cultures, and the organization of professional labour processes will also be addressed. The first half of the course will review the history of approaches to the meaning and study of professions as well as address key concepts, issues and dynamics of professions and professional work. The second half of the course will focus on leading conceptual issues and research on professional learning dynamics specifically. Students will be encouraged to combine the development of course assignments with existing research projects/goals/interests.

People who migrate across borders—immigrants, temporary foreign workers, asylum seekers, refugees, and others—are culturally and linguistically dynamic people who bring valuable contributions, perspectives, and desires to their new home in Canada and elsewhere. At the same time, these people often experience racialization, linguistic marginalization, cognitive imperialism, deskilling, and other forms of exclusion and dehumanization that often go unrecognized. Adult education holds a unique and vibrant place in this ongoing political reality. This course centres emergence, dialogue, and radical unknowing in order to forge new knowledge combining critical race theory, transnational and women of colour feminisms, and other fields with popular and outsider activities by members of multiply marginalized social groups who are experts and authors of their own lives. Students will examine their own lived experiences and teaching in the past and present, in order to develop a critical praxis for their future work as anti-racist practitioners and scholars. Through our work together as a unique, accountable, and caring class community, we will examine “authoritative” texts about “anti-racist” practice in settlement and community-based education to discover the cracks, frictions, potentials and possibilities that exist when people put their heads together and hope, restlessly and love-full-y. a better world in the making.

This special topics course explores adult education through the lens of three conceptual frames: language, dialogue, and becoming. It explores adult education as a field of study, an activity, and a way people come together to build possibilities. We consider adult education as meaning making where culturally and linguistically dynamic people, including people who migrate and cross borders, who experience racialization, and who communicate in multilingual/multidialectal ways, interact productively and creatively. This course considers this approach to adult education through a feminist, critical sociolinguistic model that foregrounds emergence as well as the agency and capacities of historically marginalized members of social groups, resisting trends in define these people through deficit and dysfunction. We consider how power works in adult education, paying attention to intersections of privilege and marginalization, and question how people in power define—and at times cannot define—what is “good,” “right,” and “just” in these contexts. Understanding the ways language, identity, and self-determination interact in adult education leads us to recast this undertaking as creative and humanizing for culturally and linguistically dynamic students and teachers alike.

The year 2020 was marked by global uprisings calling for defunding and abolishing the police, prisons and all forms of carceral institutions and practices. Although sparked by the horrendous killing of George Floyd in the U.S. the abolition movement has a long history rooted in community organizing within Black, Indigenous, Racialized, Queer and Trans Communities in North America. Black activist scholars working in the Black Radical Tradition cite the histories of trans-atlantic slavery and plantation economics that continue to reproduce regimes of terror, torture and containment reproduced through the process of neoliberalism, racial capitalism, settler colonialism and imperialism. Indigenous activist scholars cite the role of police and the military in land dispossession, extractivism, genocide, mass incarceration and criminalization. Recently in Toronto, Queer and Trans communities have formed coalitions with sex workers, unhoused, prison labourers, Indigenous women’s anti-violence groups, migrant workers, harm reduction workers, encampment communities, Palestinian Liberation activists and other criminalized activists and organizers, calling for a new vision of collective life dismantled of carceral logics. But what do these visions of collective life look like? This course surveys the literature and existing examples of community grass roots initiatives that re-imagine community wellbeing from a decolonized abolition perspective. From these examples we will study pedagogies of abolition to assemble ideas and tools for world-building.

This course introduces the foundational theory and practice of coaching and mentoring as a dialogic and relational way of working with people. The emphasis is on collaborative meaning-making whether it is coaching individuals, teams, or larger groups. The aim of the course is to provide students with highly practical experiences of coaching and mentoring interactions in class so that the skills can be applied to their immediate work context. Students will learn through live demonstration, video recordings, and small group exercises. This course will examine the process and efficacy of collaborative meaning-making based on the dominant perspectives addressed in the course: social constructionism, critical theory, and solution-focused approaches.

Build your experience in Student Affairs and Services by earning course credit through an internship to develop career ready skills with graduate level experience. Professional placements are in the Higher Education sector, namely in Student Affairs Offices such as Student Life.

Build your experience in Student Affairs and Services by earning course credit through an internship to develop career ready skills with graduate level experience. Professional placements are in the Higher Education sector, namely in Student Affairs Offices such as Student Life.

This course will prepare students to conduct large scale quantitative data analysis for a thesis, dissertation, journal article, or policy report. Students should enter this course with basic knowledge of descriptive statistics, inference and regression techniques. This course will have 2 broad learning goals. First, it will expose students to 3 advanced statistical techniques and procedures: categorical data analysis, with a focus on logistic regression; causal inference, with a focus on propensity score matching, and missing data analysis, with a focus on multiple imputation. Please note course topics will lean towards sociologically-oriented educational research, and will not cover detailed issues in psychometrics or econometrics. Second, students will receive guidance in the management and analysis of large data sets, including administrative and survey data, and will become acquainted with STATA statistical software. Each week will have a scheduled lecture on a course topic followed by a lab-tutoring in which students will conduct exercises using Stata statistical software.

In this course, we will examine ways that critical qualitative research supports educational leaders in their quest to create lasting sustainable change. The purpose of this course is to learn how to engage in qualitative research that challenges embedded system inequities in education and schooling. We are living, working, and researching during a time where now more than ever, research must be impactful on the work of educational leaders in the field. For this reason, we will be in a constant state of collective learning and doing. We will explore qualitative research methods to examine forms of social inequality, particularly studies examining inequity in education. This analysis will focus primarily on the historical relationship between those who have been subjugated and the concept of scientific research and knowledge production. This critique will inform our approaches to socially engaged scholarship that employs research methods to move us toward social justice in education. We will review critical theoretical frameworks and research methodological approaches (e.g., autoethnography, narrative inquiry, critical ethnography, narrative interviews, phenomenology etc) that are intentional and non-extractive, critical approaches to qualitative research. We will also review steps in qualitative data analysis. Moreover, this course will allow students the opportunity to practice, and apply learning in every class. The course is intended to support students on their research journey.

This course is grounded in the notion that school leadership is best understood within the context within which it is practised. Leadership praxis of school leaders will be explored - challenges and everyday realities they face, and the strategies they employ as they navigate the complexities within which they work. Colonialism has left lasting legacies in spaces and on education. While there is a substantial body of research in educational leadership, the majority is primarily grounded in Western conceptions of leadership and contexts. Loomba (2015) describes postcolonialism as a body of theory and a field of study that seeks to critically examine the legacy of western colonialism in non-western contexts. In this course, students will examine the work of school leaders primarily in the global south, the impact of colonization on local educational leadership practices and policies, and wrestle with understandings and tensions of the “post-colonial”. School leadership connections to curriculum, pedagogy, and student success grounded within local indigenous contexts will be examined.

This course explores the changing relationship between social movements/protests and news media in North America, the role of the press within political democracies, and the significance of independently-produced media from the birth of the camcorder in the 20th century, to the contemporary explosion of user-generated content and the rise of the participatory web. The course will cover contemporary social movements in North America ranging from the 1950s Civil Rights, to women’s liberation, Black Power and Pride, lesbian and gay rights, and more recent uprisings such as Occupy Wall Street, Idle No More, and #BlackLivesMatter. Students will read foundational texts in communication and media studies, including philosophies of the Frankfurt School and critical theory, and contemporary scholarship on social movements, democracy, political communication, and social media practices. How do news media represent social movements, and how do social movements in turn shape popular culture and media? How do contemporary scholars and media consumers understand the changing function of news in agenda setting, shaping public debate, and creating public spheres? What are the roles of news media in shaping public opinion? What is the relationship of propaganda to war? What have been the roles of news media in mediating knowledge of social movements and public opinion regarding these protests? How has the rise of the participatory web and social media practices altered both public and activists’ perceptions of corporate-owned media narratives? Course texts will centrally include documentaries of social movement histories, including Eyes on the Prize; The Corporation; The Control Room; The Take; United in Anger: A History of ACT-UP; and other recent films documenting 20th and 21st century protest movements. Course assignments will include hands-on engagement of social media platforms such as blogging, and other web-based communication tools; engaging assigned readings through ongoing threaded discussion; and a final written essay.

This course critically examines how racialized social relations shape educational experience, and how they are both reproduced and challenged in schools. Recognizing the white settler colonial foundations of education systems in Canada, this course pays particular attention to multiple—and at times competing—conceptions of Black identity and politics, and explores how different groups in Canada are racialized in different yet overlapping and co-constitutive ways. We engage such questions as: What have been the prevailing educational experiences and concerns shared by Black learners, teachers and communities in various Canadian and historical contexts? How have these changed and persisted over time? How have communities, scholars and activists contested white hegemony in Canadian schooling? This course approaches these questions through an interdisciplinary and multifaceted engagement with academic research, community-based and activist research, nonfiction, contemporary art and popular culture.

The contemporary politics of identity are informed by centuries of Western philosophical discourse about recognition going back to at least Hegel. More recent theorists have wrestled with the limits of state neutrality and the possibility of redressing massive injustice through selective attention to identity. In this course we will study some of the seminal liberal debates on the relationship between identity, recognition, and justice (Taylor; Honneth; Kymlicka; Fraser) alongside their prominent critiques (Fanon; Coulthard; Mills). To what extent is identity a promising focal point for social transformation? Can the liberal state accommodate the needs of all identity groups, despite its stain of racism and colonialism? If not, what other forms of governance and social organization are needed? Throughout the course we will highlight the implications of these discussions for education, and social justice education in particular.

This course explores connections among Blackness, identity and identification, and empowerment. It examines how identity construction, formation, negotiation and politics shape and are shaped by Blackness in matters of inclusion, racialization and decolonial resistance. We will become familiarized with the central conceptions in the study of identity and its intersectionality with anti-Black racism, activism and community building. We will analyse Canadian and global topics and events to engage theoretical, thematic and socio-political debates about Blackness, identification and resilience, particularly as they are relevant for educational and socio-political spheres.

This course will examine how discourses and rhetoric of truth, truth claims, and epistemologies have changed over time in Western thought and culture. The survey will include examination of how scholarly disciplines such as history, science, and philosophy, and feminist theory have developed their conceptions of truth claims, evidence, and epistemology. We will explore popular conceptions of truth, in the context of contemporary journalism, media, and digital media politics, from the rise of photojournalism to deep fakes. We will examine such events as epidemics, Truth and Reconciliation in Canada, slave narratives, and legal conceptions of testimony. We will also consider how binaries of reason and emotion shape perceptions and experiences of truth in more subjective sense, attending to questions of trust, belief, and skepticism.

This courses examines Islamophobia through a historical and educational lens. The course begins by tracing Islamophobia’s genealogy and ‘othering’ of Muslims in five main periods: (1) Crusades and Islam as heresy; (2) Colonialism and the invasion of Berber Muslims; (3) Neocolonialism and the impact of media; (4) September 11, 2001 attacks and its aftermath; and (5) Rise of populism: post-Trump and the rhetoric of hate. In the second section of the course, we will critically engage with literature that looks at the manufacturing of fear toward Islam and Muslims and the way this has impacted how Muslim, particularly women, are represented in the media. In the third and final section of the course, Muslim students and educators’ experiences of Islamophobia, particularly in Canada, are explored. In this section, critical counter-narratives are examined. This course will further focus on how educators identify literature and media that creates and provides counterarguments for Islamophobia within a critical pedagogical framework.

In this course, we explore the inescapable fact that any experience of disability is mediated. Disability is mediated through, among other things, computers, cell phones, film, novels, news, drama, myth, adages, advertising. This course treats these forms of mediation as stories that reflect and shape cultural understandings of disability. Making use of interpretive disability studies theory and methods, we examine how various media-forms stage encounters with dominant meanings of disability. The course is oriented to the possibility of reading, writing, performing and depicting disability differently from how it is typically done. By treating forms of mediation as a space for critical cultural inquiry and by attending to how these mediations are politically and socially organized, the course aims to nurture unexpected, even life-affirming, mediations of disability.

Making use of narrative inquiry as a disability studies orientation, this seminar course will examine the life of disability as it is written and narrated in contemporary Western culture. We will explore the narratives of disability found in various professions such as medicine, rehabilitation, special education and disability studies itself. These narratives act as the dominant cultural background upon which stories of disability emerge. Ironically, this dominant narrative provides the ground and possibility for radical and critical disability stories. The latter are written and narrated by disabled people. The overall aim of this course is to demonstrate that disability appears to all of us, disabled and non-disabled people, as a story to be told and lived. Thus, this course demonstrates and exemplifies Thomas King’s (2003) “insight” that “the truth about stories is that that’s all we are” (p. 2).

This course will focus on the themes of power, truth, and identity in the work of Michel Foucault. Readings will be taken from primary sources across Foucault's oeuvre and related texts in 19th and 20th Century German and French philosophy. By examining Foucault's thought in context, we will trace the development of poststructuralism and its implications for social justice education. This course is recommended for students with some background in European theory and those pursuing related independent research.

This course explores the question: What relations between disability and disability studies are possible within social justice education? This course will not be restricted to the examination of educational settings such as elementary school to university. It will also include explorations of novels, hospitals settings, policing, street life, etc. The course will also consider the body in terms of injury, healing, and life and death. We will explore a variety of ways that disability can appear and disappear within these social justice situations. There will both seminar discussion and guest lectures whereby we will explore the place and meaning of disability and disability studies in relation to social justice education.

This seminar course will demonstrate how vision is not merely a cultural phenomenon, but is itself culture. Vision is not merely a physiological apparatus that allows us to see the world. It is a culture that implicitly defines the world before any perception of it takes place. This course will outline the features, norms, and values of visual culture and will show how this culture creates blindness both as its’ binary opposition and its’ quintessential nemmines. And yet, this course demonstrates that blindness is a social position from which a new perspective of the world can be gained and from which we can learn about the meaning of the human and of humanity. We will not treat blindness as the lack of sight and, therefore, as the deficit of perception. Instead, we will treat blindness as the opportunity to learn, to treat blindness as a teacher that can teach us something about how we come to know each other and how we come to treat each other. This course will explore the possibility of blindness as an opportunity to experience a radical version of seeing and perception that generates a critical version of social justice. Informed by Disability Studies, we will make use of scholarly, literary as well as theatrical work as a way to embrace the need for Blind Studies and its place in visual culture in the academy.

This course explores different ethical, moral, and philosophical foundations of the teachings of the Persian philosopher-poet Rumi. We will engages in a close reading of Rumi’s oeuvre and revisit our educational praxis through the conceptualization of ethical resistance. Specifically, through a critical analysis of Rumi’s stories and poetries as well as his Sufi roots, we engage with Rumi’s ‘philosophy of ecstasy’ as a form of epistemic disobedience. The course will provide a critical overview of how Eastern ways of knowing can inform social justice practices and provides depth and dimension to Rumi’s notion of School of Ishq (Love) and the Imaginal curriculum. Further, we will discuss how Rumi’s teachings inform ethical activism as we apply the philosopher-poet’s teachings to contemporary moral and ethical dilemmas in education.

This course explores critical historic inquiry into the construction and reproduction of knowledge that constitute global Anti-Black racism. Using an anti-colonial and anti racism framework, the imposition of Eurocentric knowledge through social Darwinism, scientific racism, and eugenics is examined. Africa is centered as the beginning of civilization. The construction and meaning of race are explored from European encounters in Africa, colonialism, and imperialism to interrogate the fallacies of discovery and the stigmatization of Africa and Africans. The historical formations of racial hierarchy are explored as ideological and cultural inception and domination. The course will examine historical accounts from North, West and East African countries to illustrate the establishment of local governments and societies before the Trans-Atlantic human trafficking of Africans into enslavement. Examples from these countries illustrate the rich vibrancy of cultural knowledge that was stolen and appropriated in the Western world. Anti-black racism is examined in history of European exploitation of Africa, the outcome of colonialism and imperialism to ask what needs to happen now to create meaningful changes for tomorrow?

This course analyses decolonization and how it shapes and is shaped by education. It conceptualizes decolonization and decolonial resistance and their intersectionality with identity and belongingness, subjectivity and activism. It explores ways in which education strengthens decolonization in order to foster transformation and inclusion.

Ce séminaire explore l'antiracisme et la décolonisation et le lien entre ces deux domaines. Nous explorons la race en tant que construction sociale, le racisme et la lutte contre le racisme. Nous conceptualisons la décolonisation et la résistance décoloniale et le lien à la francophonie, la lutte antiraciste, le multiculturalisme et l’éducation. Nous misons sur des perspectives et stratégies susceptibles de renforcer la libération et l’inclusion.

Ce cours s’intéresse aux méthodes narratives en éducation et tout particulièrement à l’approche méthodologique des contre-récits et des récits alternatifs. Nous naviguons dans le quotidien à partir de catégories de classement qui influencent notre rapport au monde et aux autres et à partir desquelles se perpétuent les injustices scolaires et sociales. Le contre-récit est un dispositif méthodologique qui vise à interroger les représentations sociales dominantes et à agir ainsi en tant qu’espace de résistance. Les domaines tels que les théories critiques de la race, les études postcoloniales et Indigenous, l’écologie et le changement climatique, ainsi que la sociologie et la philosophie de l’éducation sont autant de contextes où les contre-récits sont mis à contribution pour appréhender les enjeux de justice sociale. Le récit alternatif consiste enfin à faire travailler l’imagination sociologique à la lumière de l’analyse critique. Ce cours se consacre à l’étude de l’approche narrative des contre-récits et des récits alternatifs en choisissant le terrain de l’éducation comme élément pivot. Il se conçoit dans l’intersection des théories critiques et de la mise à contribution des démarches méthodologiques développées dans diverses études variées.

Various events — from the discovery in Canada of unmarked mass graves of indigenous children to protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in the United States — sparked renewed attention to colonial endurance and reignited calls to decolonize. However, much of the public discussion has focused on setter-colonialism in North America, often omitting how the United States and Canada continue to be imperialist actors in the global South, as well as abettors of settler-colonial practices in places like Israel/Palestine and Kashmir. This course critically investigates imperialism and decolonization from the vantage point of one region of the global South: Asia. Topics covered may include Asian settler-colonialisms (from Palestine to Kashmir and Xinjiang), Hindutva appropriations of decolonization in India, digital imperialisms (from call centers to drone warfare), global China and debates on “Chinese imperialism,” migration and Asian diasporas, and anti-colonial nationalisms and internationalisms. Ultimately, the course will deepen our theoretical and empirical understanding of imperialism and decolonization, especially as these dynamics manifest in Asia, while also interrogating the construction of “Asia” as a region of inquiry and intervention.

In and beyond the academy, there is renewed interest in radical or revolutionary change. This course examines revolutionary theory and practice — or praxis — from several peripheral or non-normative locations. We will pay specific attention to the reinvention of Marxism — a revolutionary ideology that conventionally centered the aspirations of white, male and industrial working-classes — to engage differences across political-economic formations, class, race/caste/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Topics covered may include African socialism, Maoisms in South, Southeast and East Asia, indigenous Marxisms in the Americas, guerrillaism in Cuba, liberation theology in Latin America, Arab and Islamic socialisms, black Marxisms in the United States, and queer Marxism in China. Mobilizing an interdisciplinary approach, the course will deepen our understanding of broader issues like the nature of theory and theorizing, the relationship between critical theory and political practice, the interaction between political economy and ideology, and theory-making and pedagogies for liberation beyond formal educational settings.