August 10, 2016 - 12:03
Race-ing Education
Fall 2016
Jody Cohen, Education 208: Race-ing Education, TTH 12:55-2:15
"...we live race as if it has meaning and we live within a society in which those raced meanings have innumerable consequences." (Warmington, "Taking race out of scare quotes: Race-conscious social analysis in an ostensibly post-racial world")
This class is part of a cluster of three courses in a 360° on The Poetics and Politics of Race: Querying Black & White, which aims to unpack how meaning is made from representations of race—from artifacts in an anthropological context, to representations in literature, to how people teach and learn.
This course investigates education as part of processes of racialization and marginalization and also as a space for challenging these processes. How do race and schooling intersect and interact? How can educators – along with students, parents, and communities – learn and teach critical awareness of race as an idea and a system? With a focus on the U.S. in the context of global issues, we look at ways in which race as a way of creating power is embedded in earlier iterations of schooling, as in cases regarding access to education for Black, Latinx, Native, and Asian students. We consider how such issues play out in the recent past and contemporary moment through relevant legal cases; work in Critical Race Theory, LatCrit, and Whiteness studies by such educators and theorists as Zeus Leonardo, Tara Yosso, Bryan Brayboy, and Ali Michael; and curriculum and pedagogy in the theory and practice of such educators as Stacey Lee and Christopher Emdin, and such movements as Black Lives Matter. We also consider Bryn Mawr’s own history, in light of how to move forward through critically engaged education.
Learning Outcomes:
This course seeks to develop participants’ knowledge, skills, and awareness in the following areas:
* Students will gain a working knowledge of how race/ethnicity/culture have historically impacted access to education and how this has shaped the contemporary moment.
* Students will learn about curriculum and pedagogy in relation to races/ethnicities/cultures of learners, in K-12 and higher education contexts and beyond formal schooling.
* Students will gain facility with theoretical frameworks including Critical Race Theory as lenses on schooling as part of interlocking social, institutional structures.
Accomodations:
Students who think they may need accommodations in this course because of the impact of a learning difference are encouraged to meet with the course instructor early in the semester. Students who attend Bryn Mawr can also contact Access Services Coordinator Deborah Alder at dalder@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7351, to verify their eligibility for reasonable accommodations. Haverford Students can contact Patty Rawlings at the Office of Disabilities Services, prawling@haverford.edu or 610-896-1290.
More broadly, please be in touch if and as you need other kinds of accomodations, and we'll work this out together.
Course expectations and activities:
- Be in class and do the reading! This course will involve students as critical readers and writers of texts, active participants in class discussions, and participants in other education-related settings. Your presence and active engagement are essential. If the need arises for you to miss a class, be late or leave early, please email me ahead of time if possible.
- Most of our readings are available online - with the links in our syllabus or available in our protected reading file. We are also using two full books, Zeus Leonardo's Race Frameworks and Claudia Rankine's Citizen. You can purchase these in the bookstore or online, and they are also on reserve in Canaday.
- Written/presentation assignments include Race Journaling (four posts due Tues. @ 10 pm) along co-designing and facilitating part of a class; a 5-page paper; and a teaching and learning plan - all described below. [Note: If there is a reason why you cannot complete an assignment by the due date, speak to me about an extension BEFORE the date that the assignment is due. Please limit your use of this option to one assignment.] In all written assignments, please take care to edit and proofread your work so that needless errors do not distract readers from the strength of your thinking.
- Collaborate with your journal group to co-design part of a class.
- Meet with me twice - once early on and once later in the semester - to discuss your work in the course.
- Participate in developing an interactive event on campus the way to the final 360 exhibit.
Assignments:
1) Race journaling and co-facilitating:
Seeing/hearing/experiencing race in our everyday lives: During the first four weeks of the semester, you will keep a “race journal” in which you document and reflect on instances where you encounter/perceive "race" – implicitly and/or explicitly, and as defined by you – in dimensions of your daily life including summer experiences; media; school/education; daily living spaces, e.g. dorms/dining halls/streets.
You may write in your journal as often as you like and at whatever length you choose, though each week I’ll ask that you write at least once about that week’s focal dimension and post to your journal group by Tues. @ 10 pm. Please read your group members’ posts before coming to class on Thurs., and be ready to discuss.
You will have time to meet with your groups in class, to discuss what you’re seeing and writing about. Consider how these offer - or don’t, or might - opportunities for teaching/learning.
Then your group will plan and do an activity with our class in which you use your journaling and discussions to launch a piece of teaching/learning with the class. We'll talk more in class about what this might look like.
2. Story and/as theory:
* Tell a “race story” that is also an “education story” – and we’ll discuss and you’ll define the key terms here. Use several theorists/theoretical perspectives to offer more than one “readings” of this story.
OR
* Start with a theoretical perspective on race and education and tell one or more stories that give us several “practice-based” ways of considering the theory.
You will be using our shared texts and may also choose to use additional texts, including postings.
(approx. 5-7 pp.)
3. 360 project: final exhibit.
Section I: Frameworks for race and education
Week 1: Media and culture
Day 1, Tues. Aug. 31:
Orienting to the course
Day 2, Thurs. Sept. 1:
* Noguera, “Creating Schools Where Race Does Not Predict Achievement”
* Grant, Manning, and Allweiss, “Education in Urban Spaces: Media Images and Neoliberal discourses”
* Ladson-Billings, “’Stakes is High’: Educating New Century Students”
(in our protected reading file)
Week 2: Critical race theory
Day 3, Tues. Sept. 6:
* Zeus Leonardo, Race Frameworks: A Multidimensional Theory of Racism and Education, intro, chap. 1, “Critical Race Theory in Education”
[NOTE: This Leonardo reading is available in our protected file, since it comes so early in the semester.]
* http://www.aaihs.org/resources/charlestonsyllabus/
** Due Tues. @ 10 pm: Journal post #1: Seeing/hearing/experiencing race in our everyday lives: During the first four weeks of the semester, you will keep a “race journal” in which you document and reflect on instances where you encounter/perceive "race" – implicitly and/or explicitly, and as defined by you – in these dimensions of your daily life: summer experiences (#1); media; school/education; daily living spaces, e.g. dorms/dining halls/streets.
Day 4, Thurs. Sept. 8:
* Read your journal group’s posts
* Yosso, “Whose Culture Has Capital? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth”
* Brayboy, “Culture, Place, and Power”
(in our protected reading file)
Week 3: Learning in museums
Day 5, Tues. Sept. 13:
* Ellsworth, Places of Learning: Media, Architecture, Pedagogy, “Pedagogy’s Hinge: Putting Inside and Outside into Relation”
(in our protected reading file)
** Due Tues. @ 10 pm: Journal post #2: Seeing/hearing/experiencing race in our everyday lives: During the first four weeks of the semester, you will keep a “race journal” in which you document and reflect on instances where you encounter/perceive "race" – implicitly and/or explicitly, and as defined by you – in these dimensions of your daily life: summer experiences; media (#2); school/education; daily living spaces, e.g. dorms/dining halls/streets.
Day 6, Thurs. Sept. 15:
* Read your journal group’s posts
The Educational Role of the Museum, ed. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill:
* Hooper-Greenhill, “Education, Communication, and Interpretation: Towards a Critical Pedagogy in Museums”
* Shuh, “Teaching Yourself to Teach with Objects”
* Dodd, “Whose Museum is it Anyway?”
(in our protected reading file)
Week 4: Representation in and beyond language
Day 7, Tues. Sept. 20:
* Leonardo, chap. 2, “Marxism and Race: The Racialized Division of Labor”
* Grace Pusey, “’Unghosting’ African American Women’s Labor History at Bryn Mawr College, 1880-1940" (in Big Books protected reading file)
** Due Tues. @ 10 pm: Journal post #3: Seeing/hearing/experiencing race in our everyday lives: During the first four weeks of the semester, you will keep a “race journal” in which you document and reflect on instances where you encounter/perceive "race" – implicitly and/or explicitly, and as defined by you – in these dimensions of your daily life: summer experiences; media; school/education (#3); daily living spaces, e.g. dorms/dining halls/streets.
Day 8, Thurs. Sept. 22:
* Read your journal group’s posts
* Flores and Rosa, “Undoing Appropriateness: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and Language Diversity in Education”
(in our protected reading file)
Week 5:
Day 9, Tues. Sept. 27:
* Leonardo, chap. 4, "Cultural Studies, Race Representation, and Education"
** Due Tues. @ 10 pm: Journal post #4: Seeing/hearing/experiencing race in our everyday lives: During the first four weeks of the semester, you will keep a “race journal” in which you document and reflect on instances where you encounter/perceive "race" – implicitly and/or explicitly, and as defined by you – in these dimensions of your daily life: summer experiences; media; school/education; daily living spaces, e.g. dorms/dining halls/streets (#4).
Day 10, Thurs. Sept. 29:
* Read your journal group’s posts
(in our protected reading file)
Section II: Approaches to teaching and learning
Week 6:
Day 11, Tues. Oct. 4:
Review Leonardo, chap. 4
Journal groups: discuss your final posts and/or
discuss your ideas/drafting toward your papers.
Day 12, Thurs. Oct. 6:
Coxall, "Museum Text as Mediated Message" (protected reading file)
Due Fri. @ 11:59 pm: Story/theory paper
BREAK
II. Teaching and learning in museums and other spaces outside schools
Week 7:
Day 13, Tues. Oct. 18:
Whitney Lopez and Alice Lesnick present on the exhibit “Backtalk: Exposures, Erasures, and Elisions of the Bryn Mawr College African Art Collection”
Day 14, Thurs. Oct. 20:
- Dewey, “The Live Creature”
- Ellsworth, Places of Learning, “Introduction”
(in our protected reading file)
Week 8:
Day 15, Tues. Oct. 25:
- Conn, Do Museums Still Need Objects? “Museums, Public Space, and Civic Identity”
(in our protected reading file)
Day 16, Thurs. Oct. 27:
Field trip to Norris Square
Week 9:
Day 17, Tues. Nov. 1:
- Ellsworth, Places of Learning, “The Materiality of Pedagogy”
(in our protected reading file)
Day 18, Thurs. Nov. 3:
- Ellsworth, Places of Learning, “Pedagogy’s Time and Space”
(in our protected reading file)
Week 10:
Day 19, Tues. Nov. 8:
Gilmore and Sabine, The Educational Role of the Museum, “Writing Readable Text”
- Review Coxall, "Museum Text as Mediated Message" (protected reading file)
Day 20, Thurs. Nov. 10:
Week 11:
Day 21, Tues. Nov. 15: Developing an exhibit
- Baxandall, Exhibiting Cultures, “Exhibiting Intention: Some Preconditions of the Visual Display of Culturally Purposeful Objects”
- Macdonald, The Educational Role of the Museum, “Cultural Imagining Among Museum Visitors”
- Fair Photographs? Label Examples(in protected reading file)
Day 22, Thurs. Nov. 17:
- pp. 50-58 of Csikszentmihalyi and Hermanson, The Educational Role of the Museum “Intrinsic Motivation in Museums: Why Does One Want to Learn?”
Day 23, Tues. Nov. 22:
- McGinnis, The Educational Role of the Museum, “The Disabling Society"
Week 13:
Day 24, Tues. Nov. 27:
- Grasso and Morrison, The Educational Role of the Museum “Collaboration: Toward a More Holistic Design Process”
- McGinnis, The Educational Role of the Museum, “The Disabling Society"
Day 25, Thurs. Nov. 29:
Continued work on exhibit.
Week 14:
Day 26, Tues. Dec. 6:
- Exhibit work
Day 27, Thurs., Dec. 8