Graduate Courses

Instructor: Lisa Rosen  |  W 11:30 AM - 2:20 PM 

How and why do educational outcomes and experiences vary across student populations? What role do schools play in a society’s system of stratification? How do schools both contribute to social mobility and to the reproduction of the prevailing social order? This course examines these questions through the lens of social and cultural theory, engaging current academic debates on the causes and consequences of social inequality in educational outcomes. We will engage these debates by studying foundational and emerging theories and examining empirical research on how social inequalities are reproduced or ameliorated through schools. Through close readings of historical, anthropological and sociological case studies of schooling in the U.S, students will develop an understanding of the structural forces and cultural processes that produce inequality in neighborhoods and schools, how they contribute to unequal opportunities, experiences, and achievement outcomes for students along lines of race/ethnicity, class, gender, and immigration status, and how students themselves navigate and interpret this unequal terrain. We will cover such topics as neighborhood and school segregation; peer culture; social networks; elite schooling; the interaction between home, society and educational institutions; and dynamics of assimilation for students from immigrant communities.

Instructor: Jennifer Etienne  |  T R 12:30 - 1:50 PM

How did American education move from goals of integration to diversity, equity, and inclusion? In this course, we will interrogate Brown v. Board of Education not as an endpoint of segregation, but as a contested legal intervention whose promises were systematically constrained by racial capitalism, institutional resistance, and the durability of white supremacy. Our goal will be to examine the meaning of integration and diversity, equity, and inclusion in contemporary contexts of education. Students will engage both primary sources and important contemporary academic texts to wrestle with the narratives of racial progress and the future of these goals in today’s political context.

Bi-weekly Lecture  |  R 12:30 – 1:50 PM

EDSO MA Certificate students are required to enroll in this course for two quarters. Grading is Pass/Fail based on attendance. 

The Committee on Education hosts this bi-weekly Workshop on Education Lecture Series, in which leading researchers from both the University of Chicago and other institutions present cutting-edge research and discuss methodological advances for understanding the interplay of human development and the social institution of schooling. Students in the Education and Society certificate program are required to consistently attend the Education Workshop over a period of at least two quarters during their year of study. The Workshop provides a common intellectual foundation for students and faculty, who have the opportunity to hear presentations of new work by renowned faculty and promising emerging scholars, prior to publication.

Instructor: Melinh Lai  |  T R 2:00 – 3:20 PM

What is the relationship between physical processes in the brain and body and the processes of thought and consciousness that constitute our mental life? Philosophers and others have puzzled over this question for millennia. Many have concluded it to be intractable. In recent decades, the field of cognitive science–encompassing philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and other disciplines–has proposed a new form of answer. The driving idea is that the interaction of the mental and the physical may be understood via a third level of analysis: that of the computational. This course offers a critical introduction to the elements of this approach, and surveys some of the alternative models and theories that fall within it. Readings are drawn from a range of historical and contemporary sources in philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and computer science.

Instructor: Micere Keels  |  M 1:30 - 4:20 PM

The problems confronting urban schools are bound to the social, economic, and political conditions of the urban environments in which schools reside. Thus, this course will explore social, economic, and political issues, with an emphasis on issues of race and class as they have affected the distribution of equal educational opportunities in urban schools. We will focus on the ways in which family, school, and neighborhood characteristics intersect to shape the divergent outcomes of low- and middle-income children residing with any given neighborhood. Students will tackle an important issue affecting the residents and schools in one Chicago neighborhood. 

Instructor: Emilia Wenzel  |  T R 3:30 – 4:50 PM 

In this course, we will investigate critical issues within early childhood education. The questions we will engage with throughout the course are: What makes early childhood a pivotal stage of development? How do families, teachers and preschool curricula shape children’s experiences? How do systemic inequalities manifest in early learning environments? We will address these questions by examining early learning contexts through various interdisciplinary lenses including developmental psychology, sociology, public policy and education. The course will examine the state of early childhood education in the US, the role of parents and communities, ways to affirm identity in the early years, the influence of teachers in early learning environments and strategies to support early math and language development. Research, policy and real-world examples will drive learning for this course, enabling us to bridge theory and practice. Throughout the quarter, we will search for academic sources as well as news sources to deeply engage with critical issues within early childhood education.

Instructor: Salikoko Mufwene | T R 2:00 - 3:20 PM

This course can also be taken by students who are not majoring in Linguistics but are interested in learning something about the uniqueness of human language, spoken or signed. It covers a selection from the following topics: What is the position of spoken language in the usually multimodal forms of communication among humans? In what ways does spoken language differ from signed language? What features make spoken and signed language linguistic? What features distinguish linguistic means of communication from animal communication? How do humans communicate with animals? From an evolutionary point of view, how can we account for the fact that spoken language is the dominant mode of communication in all human communities around the world? Why cannot animals really communicate linguistically? What do the terms language "acquisition" and "transmission" really mean? What factors account for differences between "language acquisition" by children and by adults? Are children really perfect language learners? What factors bring about language evolution, including language speciation and the emergence of new language varieties? How did language evolve in mankind? This is a general education course without any prerequisites. It provides a necessary foundation to those working on language at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Instructor: Marshall Jean | T R 3:30 - 4:50 PM

This course examines the social organization of formal education – how schools are shaped by the social context in which they are situated, and how students' experiences in turn shape our society. It focuses specifically on schools as the link between macrosociological phenomena (e.g. culture, political systems, segregation, inequality) and the microsociological interactions of individual students and educators. The focus will be on contemporary American education, although lessons from the past and abroad will inform our learning. Prior introductory coursework in sociology will be useful but is not required.

Instructor: Stephen Raudenbush | T R 9:30 - 10:50 AM

This course has two purposes. First, using nationally representative US surveys, we’ll examine the early emergence of educational inequality and its evolution during adolescence and adulthood. We’ll ask about the importance of social origins (parent social status, race/ethnicity, gender, and language) in predicting labor market outcomes. We’ll study the role that education and plays in shaping economic opportunity, beginning in early childhood. We’ll ask at what points interventions might effectively advance learning and reduce inequality.

Second, we’ll gain mastery over some important statistical methods required for answering these and related questions. Indeed, this course provides an introduction to quantitative methods and a foundation for other methods courses in the social sciences. We consider standard topics: graphical and tabular displays of univariate and bivariate distributions, an introduction to statistical inference, and commonly arising applications such as the t‐test, the two‐way contingency table, analysis of variance, and regression. However, all statistical ideas and methods are embedded in case studies including a national survey of adult labor force outcomes, a national survey of elementary school children, and a national survey that follows adolescents through secondary school into early adulthood. 

Instructor: Lisa Rosen  |  TBD

This course examines the dynamic relations between schooling and identity. We will explore how schools both enable and constrain the identities available to students and the consequences of this for academic achievement. We will examine these relations from multiple disciplinary perspectives, applying psychological, anthropological, sociological, and critical theories to understanding how students not only construct identities for themselves within schools, but also negotiate the identities imposed on them by others. Topics will include the role of peer culture, adult expectations, school practices and enduring social structures in shaping processes of identity formation in students and how these processes influence school engagement and achievement. We will consider how these processes unfold at all levels of schooling, from preschool through college, and for students who navigate a range of social identities, from marginalized to privileged.

Bi-weekly Lecture  |  R 12:30 – 1:50 PM

MA Certificate students are required to enroll in this course for two quarters. Grading is Pass/Fail based on attendance. 

The Committee on Education hosts this bi-weekly Workshop on Education Lecture Series, in which leading researchers from both the University of Chicago and other institutions present cutting-edge research and discuss methodological advances for understanding the interplay of human development and the social institution of schooling. Students in the Education and Society certificate program are required to consistently attend the Education Workshop over a period of at least two quarters during their year of study. The Workshop provides a common intellectual foundation for students and faculty, who have the opportunity to hear presentations of new work by renowned faculty and promising emerging scholars, prior to publication.

Instructor: Lisa Rosen | TBD

Passionate conflicts over school curriculum and educational policy are a recurring phenomenon in the history of US schooling. Why are schools such frequent sites of struggle and what is at stake in these conflicts? In this discussion-based seminar, we will consider schools as battlegrounds in the US “culture wars”: contests over competing visions of national identity, morality, social order, the fundamental purposes of public education, and the role of the state vis-à-vis the family. Drawing on case studies from history, anthropology, sociology and critical race and gender studies, we will examine both past and contemporary debates over school curriculum and school policy. Topics may include clashes over: the teaching of evolution, sex and sexuality education, busing/desegregation, prayer in schools, multiculturalism, the content of the literary canon, the teaching of reading, mathematics and history, and the closure of “underperforming” urban schools. Our inquiry will examine how social and political movements have used schools to advance or resist particular agendas and social projects.

This interdisciplinary workshop alternates between two types of sessions: 1. Methodology and 2. New Findings in Education. The Methodology sessions focus on methodological problem solving and works in progress for individuals seeking guidance on methodological problems. The New Findings in Education section functions as a typical University of Chicago workshop with detailed discussions regarding student and faculty papers. This is a zero-unit, P/F course.