About

This course focuses on the educational experiences of students with attention on research regarding the historical and present social and cultural conditions of the major ethnic/racial groups in the United States, beginning with Colonial Education to the current context of high stakes educational reform under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and President Obama’s Race to the Top. A key anchor in this historical and highly situated examination is a focus on how the various ethnic/racial groups responded and resisted within this educational history. More specifically, the course will help learners understand how increasingly diverse students (and their families and communities) interacted with schools’ conditions and practices. In the context of historical, political, sociological, and anthropological theories and research, students in this course study and learn concepts, principles, and values necessary to create and sustain a just, democratic society. As they do, they study research on the relationship between the background characteristic of students and inequities in academic outcomes of schooling. This course lays the groundwork for students’ understanding of how to recognize bias and create an equitable classroom community.

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Ruby Bridges entering William Frantz Elementary School, New Orleans, 1960. Photo by US DOJ.