Term 1 - September to December 2008
CCFI 502 (3 credits) Theorizing Knowing in Education
Wednesdays 4:30 to 7:30 pm
Dr. Aditya Raj (CSICS)
This graduate seminar deals with transdisciplinary scholarship and is concerned with research questions that intersect different ways of knowing. It will attempt to span epistemologies from different traditions, historical time and space, and discourses with the belief that there is more to knowledge than can be thought within the confines of any particular “lens.” We will address, the theoretical mooring along with the worldliness of, public, public space, citizenship, technology, differences, public knowing, in a “post-ality”: post-this and post-that. How it implicates, and what it means for, educational processes become pivotal and, therefore, will merit considerable attention. Public knowledge shall be at the heart of this graduate seminar, and our epistemological underpinnings will bestow not just what is but also what ought to be. We will try to synchronise between the world as given and the world as intended, disembodied and situated epistemologies, and between “I am” and “I think” binaries of human subjectivities. We aim to be committed to “thinking thought itself” along with the relationship between the places in which people live and the spaces in which they think. In our engagement with the readings, public lectures, and class discussions, we will explore different ways of knowing in relation to community, agency, identity, access to and engagement with new technologies, possibilities of civic engagement and social justice in a multitude of pedagogical environments
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CCFI 508D (3 credits) Review of Research in Educational Methods:
“Understanding Educational Experience Autobiographically”
Tuesdays 4:30 to 7:30pm
Dr. William Pinar (CUST)
We will study major theories of autobiography with attention to the significance of the genre for understanding educational experience. The relations among social structure, historical moment and self-formation will be emphasized, and the educational significance of their articulation specified in autobiographical as well as in theoretical terms. Given the centrality of “the individual” to especially developmental but also liberal rationales for public education and in schemes for instruction and assessment, the study of processes of self-formation seems especially pertinent to graduate students of education.
Because our readings derive from scholarship in history, literary criticism, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, we will continually slide toward – and resist – transdisciplinarity.
CCFI601B (3 credits) Doctoral Seminar: “Indigenous Knowledges & Education”
Thursdays 1:00 to 4:00pm | Cross-listed with EDST 565D
Dr. Jo-Ann Archibald (EDST)
This advanced course in Indigenous Education (I.E., lifelong and lifewide) seeks transformative and transdisciplinary approaches to improve Indigenous Education. Students will learn about the interdisciplinary relationship between Indigenous knowledges (IK) and education in order to understand how IK can be effectively used in IE policy, pedagogy, curricula, and governance. They will learn from the work of Indigenous scholars and IE sites that have demonstrated some forms of success; and they will use critical emancipatory approaches in order to move beyond a deficit theory of IE to develop understandings that will significantly enhance education for Indigenous learners and education about Indigenous matters. Indigenous Education is a priority of the Faculty of Education and UBC (TREK 2010); of the provincial governments (Min of Ed K-12 through Aboriginal Education Enhancement Agreements & Campus 2020); and of Aboriginal governments/organizations & Educational Partners’ Group (BC First Nations Leadership Council, BCTF, BC College of Teachers). Despite a slow growth trend to improve Aboriginal high school and university complete rates across Canada, much more effort and focus is needed in order to make substantial gains.
Students enrolled in this course will also be enrolled in various departmental programs as part of the Indigenous Education specialization. They will come into this course with a range of disciplinary expertise and experience based upon their masters’ programs and work experiences, which will provide a learning foundation upon which to build. An example of transdisciplinary pedagogy will be the use of some case studies where groups will work together to gain contextual understandings of the issues and they will develop strategic plans for addressing them. They will contribute understandings based upon their disciplines and they will be challenged to develop transdisciplinary approaches that incorporate IK, disciplinary knowledge, research knowledge, and community knowledge. If there was time to develop a cooperative relationship with an Aboriginal community/organization, a service learning project would be part of the course, where students work in groups with community members to develop transdisciplinary approaches.
Term 2 - January to April 2009
CCFI 501 (3 credits) Living Inquiry in Learning Communities
Wednesday 4:30 to 7:30pm
Dr. Karen Meyer (CUST)
Recognizing the pedagogical role that “living inquiry” plays in our lives as educators, researchers, and human beings is integral to understanding our educational practices and ways of being in the world. Living inquiry critically and openly investigates the impact of our presence, our knowing, our language and action within educational contexts. Living inquiry also acknowledges the lived and shared experiences of learners within multiple spaces of learning. This course is designed to explore with students theoretical, relational, and experiential (re)presentations of communal practice, exploring and creating integrity between theory and practice.
Students will engage in a variety of theoretical and experiential explorations-bridging reading of theoretical perspectives with generative dialogue, as well as collaborative and self-reflective practice. Investigating relational, intercultural, and communal sites of learning, students will generate narrative, interpretative and collaborative experiences that give voice to lived experience and shared learning.
CCFI 508A (3 credits) Review of Research in Educational Methods:
“Narrative Research and Pedagogy”
Mondays 4:30 to 7:30pm
Dr. Carl Leggo (LLED)
In order to understand the complex dynamics that generate and shape pedagogical and curricular practices and experiences, education researchers need to consider carefully and insightfully the stories lived in schools and out of schools. "Narrative Research and Pedagogy" will examine how to plan, conduct, and write narrative research. The course will review the many kinds of narrative research that are used in education, as well as examine literary and research conceptions of narrative, particularly by paying close attention to post-modern perspectives. Graduate students in education, as well as in many other disciplines, are demonstrating a growing enthusiasm for using narrative approaches and methods in their research. The emphasis in this course will be on exploring diverse ways to represent pedagogical stories, especially with attention to how post-modern perspectives on language and discourse inform and transform the understanding of narrative and narrative research in pedagogy.
Many scholars contend that human beings are epistemologically and ontologically and actively engaged with narrative knowing, being, and becoming. Everybody lives stories, and everybody hears and views the stories of others. There are many approaches to narrative used in social science research, including a/r/tography, phenomenology, hermeneutics, ethnography, autoethnography, action research, memoirs, case studies, arts-based research, lifewriting, & biography.
CCFI 565A/ADHE 565B (3 credits) Advanced Seminar in Cross-Faculty Inquiry in Education:
“Film, Storytelling and Social Justice Research”
Thursdays 9:00am to 12:00pm
Dr. Jennifer Chan (EDST)
Visual narrative research has emerged as one of the most exciting and challenging methodologies in social sciences. This course focuses on film and explores the complex relationships between cinema and social justice research. Educational contexts are broadly defined to include formal and non-formal education, adult education, and larger historicalcultural events.
Drawing upon theoretical perspectives in cultural studies and film theory, and through readings and screenings of a broad range of films, the objectives of the class is to (1) introduce students to film as a visual narrative methodology (2) examine the visual, aural, and narrative conventions by which films seek to pursue a particular social justice agenda (3) provide students with the capacity to critically analyze and use films in their educational research (4) study how movie storytelling can become a training ground for social justice research imagination. Students will engage in close viewings of short and feature-length Canadian and international dramatic, documentary, and animation productions. Throughout the course, we look at the connections between research, cinema, and activism. The key concepts are power, representation, and alternative social knowledge production.
CCFI 572A (3 credits) Advanced Seminar in Cross-Faculty Inquiry in Education:
“Theories of Media, Technology, & Culture and Learning”
Thursdays 4:30 to 7:30pm
Dr. Susan Gerofsky (CUST)
This doctoral seminar course will focus closely on three of the most influential 20th century theorists of media and culture, two of them Canadian, one French: Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis and Jean Baudrillard. We will trace the genealogy of their theories (McLuhan acknowledged his intellectual debt to Innis, and Baudrillard to McLuhan), and the widespread effects of their work on other cultural critics whose work is important in educational theory.
Innis, McLuhan and Baudrillard developed theories of media that provided the chief alternative to the simplistic linear Shannon-Weaver model of communications. Their theories ushered in postmodern critical theories of media with resonances among new technology and cultural, historical and political paradigm change, encompassing issues including the role of the arts in society, the nature of reality, hyperreality and simulation, embodiment, literacy and identity.
It is important that doctoral students encounter these key theorists’ work through primary as well as secondary sources, and form interpretations of media, technology and culture informed by some of the most provocative and original thinkers in the field.
The course will be centred on a close reading of primary texts by Innis, McLuhan and Baudrillard, set in the context of related contemporary theorists, critics and successors. Weekly readings and discussions will be supplemented by films, audio recordings and electronic archival material, as well as guest speakers.
CCFI 572D/EDST 565B (3 credits) Advanced Seminar in Cross-Faculty Inquiry in Education:
“Education: Multiculturalism, Anti-Racism & Education”
Wendesdays 4:30 to 7:30pm
Dr. Handel Wright (EDST)
This course takes up two discourses that have emerged as dominant in the examination of socio-cultural difference and social justice in Canadian (and American) society and education, namely multiculturalism and anti-racism. It invites students to consider a number of approaches to the two discourses. The first of these is the continuum approach where there are various, increasingly progressive versions of multiculturalism, with conservative multiculturalism at one end and anti-racism appearing at the other (conservative multiculturalism, liberal multiculturalism, critical multiculturalism, revolutionary multiculturalism, and anti-racism). The second is the contrast approach where integrative anti-racism and anti-racist education are seen as a stark alternative to the dominant (namely liberal, celebratory) form of multiculturalism and multicultural education. The third is the contextual approach where both multiculturalism and anti-racism are seen as specific approaches within a general social difference and social justice education framework (joining feminist, indigenous, postcolonial, queer, cultural studies, critical pedagogy, etc., discourses).
A sustained critical approach to both multiculturalism and anti-racism is encouraged in the course. In other words students are exposed to both work that advocates and work that critiques each discourse (e.g. theoretical and praxis work on multiculturalism and critical thinking critique of multiculturalism; theoretical and praxis work on anti-racism and cultural studies critique of anti-racism). The course involves both collaborative and individual work, encouraging students to work together as well as individually to examine the theory and practical applications of multiculturalism and/or anti-racism to social difference and social justice issues in education and beyond.
The primary goal of the course is to help students develop an informed epistemological stance regarding multiculturalism and anti-racism and to utilize one or a combination of the two discourses in addressing collectively or individually identified sociocultural (e.g. individual and group identity politics and multiculturalism) or educational problematics (e.g. issues in multicultural education policy and/or pedagogy).
Term 1 - September to December 2007
CCFI 502 (3 credits) Theorizing Knowing in Education
Wednesdays 4:30 to 7:30 pm
Dr. Mary Bryson (ECPS)
Theorizing Knowing introduces students to a wide spectrum of theories of knowledge from a critical perspective. Spanning epistemologies from traditional philosophies (Western, Chinese and others) to post-modern, post-structuralist notions, we will explore such ideas as distributed cognition, situated cognition, embodied knowing and post-colonial theories of knowledge, and their implications for educational practices. We will also explore and critique educational popularizations of current epistemologies such as “brain research” and “multiple intelligences”.
CCFI 508D (3 credits) Review of Research in Educational Methods:
“Understanding Educational Experience Autobiographically”
Tuesdays 4:30 to 7:30pm
Dr. William Pinar (CUST)
We will study major theories of autobiography with attention to the significance of the genre for understanding educational experience. The relations among social structure, historical moment and self-formation will be emphasized, and the educational significance of their articulation specified in autobiographical as well as in theoretical terms. Given the centrality of “the individual” to especially developmental but also liberal rationales for public education and in schemes for instruction and assessment, the study of processes of self-formation seems especially pertinent to graduate students of education.
Because our readings derive from scholarship in history, literary criticism, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, we will continually slide toward – and resist – transdisciplinarity.
CCFI601B (3 credits) Doctoral Seminar: “Indigenous Knowledges & Education”
Thursdays 1:00 to 4:00pm | Cross-listed with EDST 565D
Dr. Jo-Ann Archibald (EDST)
This advanced course in Indigenous Education (I.E., lifelong and lifewide) seeks transformative and transdisciplinary approaches to improve Indigenous Education. Students will learn about the interdisciplinary relationship between Indigenous knowledges (IK) and education in order to understand how IK can be effectively used in IE policy, pedagogy, curricula, and governance. They will learn from the work of Indigenous scholars and IE sites that have demonstrated some forms of success; and they will use critical emancipatory approaches in order to move beyond a deficit theory of IE to develop understandings that will significantly enhance education for Indigenous learners and education about Indigenous matters. Indigenous Education is a priority of the Faculty of Education and UBC (TREK 2010); of the provincial governments (Min of Ed K-12 through Aboriginal Education Enhancement Agreements & Campus 2020); and of Aboriginal governments/organizations & Educational Partners’ Group (BC First Nations Leadership Council, BCTF, BC College of Teachers). Despite a slow growth trend to improve Aboriginal high school and university complete rates across Canada, much more effort and focus is needed in order to make substantial gains.
Students enrolled in this course will also be enrolled in various departmental programs as part of the Indigenous Education specialization. They will come into this course with a range of disciplinary expertise and experience based upon their masters’ programs and work experiences, which will provide a learning foundation upon which to build. An example of transdisciplinary pedagogy will be the use of some case studies where groups will work together to gain contextual understandings of the issues and they will develop strategic plans for addressing them. They will contribute understandings based upon their disciplines and they will be challenged to develop transdisciplinary approaches that incorporate IK, disciplinary knowledge, research knowledge, and community knowledge. If there was time to develop a cooperative relationship with an Aboriginal community/organization, a service learning project would be part of the course, where students work in groups with community members to develop transdisciplinary approaches.
Term 2 - January to April 2008
CCFI 501 (3 credits) Living Inquiry in Learning Communities
Wednesday 4:30 to 7:30pm
Dr. Karen Meyer (CUST)
Recognizing the pedagogical role that “living inquiry” plays in our lives as educators, researchers, and human beings is integral to understanding our educational practices and ways of being in the world. Living inquiry critically and openly investigates the impact of our presence, our knowing, our language and action within educational contexts. Living inquiry also acknowledges the lived and shared experiences of learners within multiple spaces of learning. This course is designed to explore with students theoretical, relational, and experiential (re)presentations of communal practice, exploring and creating integrity between theory and practice.
Students will engage in a variety of theoretical and experiential explorations-bridging reading of theoretical perspectives with generative dialogue, as well as collaborative and self-reflective practice. Investigating relational, intercultural, and communal sites of learning, students will generate narrative, interpretative and collaborative experiences that give voice to lived experience and shared learning.
CCFI 508A (3 credits) Review of Research in Educational Methods:
“Narrative Research and Pedagogy”
Mondays 4:30 to 7:30pm
Dr. Carl Leggo (LLED)
In order to understand the complex dynamics that generate and shape pedagogical and curricular practices and experiences, education researchers need to consider carefully and insightfully the stories lived in schools and out of schools. "Narrative Research and Pedagogy" will examine how to plan, conduct, and write narrative research. The course will review the many kinds of narrative research that are used in education, as well as examine literary and research conceptions of narrative, particularly by paying close attention to post-modern perspectives. Graduate students in education, as well as in many other disciplines, are demonstrating a growing enthusiasm for using narrative approaches and methods in their research. The emphasis in this course will be on exploring diverse ways to represent pedagogical stories, especially with attention to how post-modern perspectives on language and discourse inform and transform the understanding of narrative and narrative research in pedagogy.
Many scholars contend that human beings are epistemologically and ontologically and actively engaged with narrative knowing, being, and becoming. Everybody lives stories, and everybody hears and views the stories of others. There are many approaches to narrative used in social science research, including a/r/tography, phenomenology, hermeneutics, ethnography, autoethnography, action research, memoirs, case studies, arts-based research, lifewriting, & biography.
CCFI 572A (3 credits) Advanced Seminar in Cross-Faculty Inquiry in Education:
“Theories of Media, Technology, & Culture and Learning”
Thursdays 4:30 to 7:30pm
Dr. Susan Gerofsky (CUST)
This doctoral seminar course will focus closely on three of the most influential 20th century theorists of media and culture, two of them Canadian, one French: Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis and Jean Baudrillard. We will trace the genealogy of their theories (McLuhan acknowledged his intellectual debt to Innis, and Baudrillard to McLuhan), and the widespread effects of their work on other cultural critics whose work is important in educational theory.
Innis, McLuhan and Baudrillard developed theories of media that provided the chief alternative to the simplistic linear Shannon-Weaver model of communications. Their theories ushered in postmodern critical theories of media with resonances among new technology and cultural, historical and political paradigm change, encompassing issues including the role of the arts in society, the nature of reality, hyperreality and simulation, embodiment, literacy and identity.
It is important that doctoral students encounter these key theorists’ work through primary as well as secondary sources, and form interpretations of media, technology and culture informed by some of the most provocative and original thinkers in the field.
The course will be centred on a close reading of primary texts by Innis, McLuhan and Baudrillard, set in the context of related contemporary theorists, critics and successors. Weekly readings and discussions will be supplemented by films, audio recordings and electronic archival material, as well as guest speakers.
CCFI 601A (3 credits) Doctoral Seminar:
“Conceptual Inquiry in Educational Research” | Cross-listed with EDST 595
Tuesdays 4:30 to 7:30 pm
Dr. Claudia Ruitenberg (EDST)
This course assists students in articulating their conceptual methods. The rationale is twofold: First, internally to philosophy, it has been argued:
"It is possible to raise and solve philosophical problems with no very clear idea of what philosophy is, what it is trying to do, and how it can best do it; but no great progress can be made until these questions have been asked and some answer to them given." (Collingwood, 1933, p. 1)
Secondly, and pragmatically, universities and granting agencies expect articulations of “methodology” in theses and applications, which poses problems for students who do theoretical work but who have been exposed only to empirical methodologies.
The course examines and articulates ways in which philosophical writing, analyzing, arguing, etc. is undertaken in education, from a range of traditions including conceptual analysis, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. It also examines and critiques the aforementioned demand for articulations of methodology.
This course is not, strictly speaking, transdisciplinary, as it is firmly located in philosophical traditions. However, the definition of what counts as “philosophy” is contested, and many students and faculty engage in work that can be considered primarily “theoretical,” “conceptual,” or “philosophical.” Since the methods, perspectives and traditions I call “philosophical” are employed across the faculty, by students and faculty with many different thematic interests, and there is no longer a single home in the faculty for conceptual, philosophical and/or theoretical work, the course certainly serves a cross-faculty purpose.
