School & Society
The School and Society course is intended to give teacher candidates an introduction to how some of the broader issues in society affect the process of education. It is focussed primarily on education in Ontario but brings in perspectives from the rest of Canada and other countries as a way of addressing some of the broad concerns in education. Because of the vast array of potential topics in the course, instructors are urged to build on their strenghts, areas of expertise and experiences to help teacher candidates appreciate how to use sociological, historical, philosophical, political, and anthropological lenses to analyse the practice of education. The topics covered in the course may include:
- The variety and purposes of schooling: relationships between broader social, political, and economic forces and educational goals over time; alternate images and forms of schooling
- Contemporary goals of education: curriculum policies; history of the educational system in Ontario and Canada; politics of schooling; how educational policies are formed and contested; the relationship between formal policy and informal practice; formal and hidden curriculum.
- Student diversity and difference: race, ethnicity, culture; Aboriginal education; religion, language, social class, gender, sexual identity, ability; what students “bring to school” with respect to life experience, relative power, and values; how schools perceive and treat (sort, value, label, organize, reward, or deny) different kinds of students; teachers’ choices and actions in relation to issues of student diversity (e.g. discipline, pedagogy, materials, content, language, assessment, program involvement, etc); equity, social justice, equality
- Democracy, conflict, and resistance in schools
- Family and community relationships with schools
- How schools are organized: professional roles and relationships; school culture; teachers’ work beyond the classroom
- Teachers’ identities: personal values and beliefs; social location (including race, ethnicity, social class, religion, gender, sexuality, ability, age, etc.); membership in professional communities; teachers as educational workers; possible strategies for intervention in everyday forms of discrimination and oppression in school