8. Program Concentrations:

Curriculum Studies in Education

Policy Studies in Education

Students will apply for admission to the program in a specific Concentration Area, either Curriculum Studies in Education or Policy Studies in Education. (They may petition to change this concentration prior to but not after completing the First Examination.) In consultation with their Advisors, and after completion of the Core with their Studies Committee, students will then select at least one advanced course in quantitative and statistical methods and one in qualitative-interpretive methods, from among those offered by the existing doctoral programs (see sample list at the end of this section). These courses will be selected so as to provide analytical techniques appropriate to each student's own emerging research interests. Students will then complete approximately 21 credits of elective courses, chosen from lists of recommended courses offered at the Graduate Center across many programs (see below for examples) and from reading courses and special topics courses under the supervision of a member of the doctoral faculty (in Curriculum and Policy Studies in Urban Education or in another program, with the approval of their Committee).

In both concentrations students will be required to pass both a First and Second Examination, as well as all other requirements, to be advanced to candidacy for the degree. The First Examination will cover the curriculum of the Core courses, and the Second Examination more specifically that of the course of studies in the student's concentration area approved by the Studies Committee.

Within the Curriculum Studies concentration, two Options will be available:

Arts, Humanities, and Social Studies Option

Mathematics, Science, and Technology Option

Students will elect an Option no later than upon completion of the Core, and most will do so before that time as they begin to take relevant elective courses and attend the Area Colloquia of interest to them (see Section 9 below) even during their first year. Students electing these Options will attend specialized Area Seminars (section 9) in which they will acquaint themselves, under faculty guidance, with the current research issues and themes in, for example, arts education or science education curriculum studies at an advanced level and begin to articulate the scope and form of their dissertation research.

Following successful completion of the Second Examination and approval of a thesis topic, students will normally participate in a Dissertation Seminar in which there will be an opportunity for co-ordination and mutual support among students whose research projects may have bearing on one another, even across Concentration or Option lines. For example several dissertations may all examine different curriculum and policy issues within the same school district, or historical and contemporary contexts of the same population of students in the public schools, or the different viewpoints of teachers in different subject fields to policy and resource distribution questions under the new school-based management schemes. It is our belief that mutual support and collaboration among students at the dissertation stage is of great value and not often enough emphasized in formal programs of doctoral studies. This approach also continues our fundamental theme of the interdependence of curricular and policy research issues into the dissertation research itself. Dissertation research and doctoral studies as a whole should not be viewed as a lonely rite of passage or proof of 'manhood' for isolated individuals, but as a communally-supported progression towards full membership in a true community of scholars.

We provide below the overview statements for each Concentration and Option regarding its purposes and emphases, along with preliminary lists of courses already offered at the Graduate Center across many programs, which index the richness and diversity of intellectual foundations for students' dissertation research. To this should be added the list of outstanding scholars in many fields who will be available to teach, advise, and counsel our doctoral students (see Section 10 and Appendix C).

 

Program Concentration: Curriculum Studies

Curriculum as Inquiry

Education in the United States is an organized enterprise costing billions annually. The primary interest for scholars in the study of schools is the shaping of the intellectual enterprise itself: the curriculum. Neither schools nor the roles of teaching and learning can be studied fruitfully outside the intellectual context of curriculum theory and research.

Arguments that curriculum is best studied through the traditional disciplines alone miss the mark, since subject matter is merely one of several necessary components in any investigation of teaching and learning in a school setting. The study of any discipline as an object leaves unanswered the crucial questions of its political, social, cultural, cognitive, ethical and pedagogical value. Even if one accepts the study of any given discipline as "essential" or "fitting" or "natural," the claim needs to be studied within the cultural and political context of mass education.

What is the nature of curriculum inquiry as an intellectual enterprise? Typically, curriculum research centers on "problems" extant in current schooling mechanisms and settings. However, curriculum inquiry is not limited to "solving problems" in contemporary school practice. Curriculum researchers also identify curriculum possibilities and new "problems," re-conceptualizing the purposes and tasks of schooling. None of this inquiry is constrained by tightly restricted methodological systems. As James Macdonald, a curriculum historian and meta-theorist, reminds us:

Curriculum theorists have found 'neat categories difficult', since the concerns of curriculum at some times must be related to what is learned by persons. Thus, curriculum always has action implications with a broad direction concern for outcomes. Under these circumstances, one is always involved in assumptions and implicit (if not explicit) statements which could be classified at various times and places as ontological, axiological, and epistemological. Concern for the nature of human "being," value theory, and the nature of knowledge are intricately woven in action contexts. But in many ways curriculum theorizing can be conveniently categorized as oriented toward statements about knowledge, statements about curriculum realities, and statements about valued activity.

The job of curriculum researchers and theorists is to investigate knowledge, curriculum realities, and valued activities in schools. The curriculum scholar investigates the existing curriculum and looks to future educational needs of a changing culture.

Twentieth century curriculum research can be said to emanate from three general emphases, each with a particular claim to value in educational research and discourse. Earlier theories are generally designated control theories. From this perspective, curriculum scholars study educational practice with an end toward controlling school outcomes, employing conceptual frameworks intended to increase efficiency or effectiveness of the educational process. A second emphasis is the hermeneutic, employing analytical perspectives with respect to current theories of curriculum. The emphasis here revolves around ideas and meaning, providing new interpretations of curricular value and creating new perspectives regarding the functions and purposes of schooling. The third emphasis, critical, focuses on the dialectic between theory and practice, identifying restrictive political, economic, and language structures as a means to develop emancipatory curricular structure and school practice.

All of these emphases may be pursued in studying the standard categories for developing curricula: the traditional, structure-of-the-disciplines, experiential, cognitive, and behavioral. But, systematic investigation of curriculum may originate in various specific theoretical frames. Systems of curriculum thought that continue to shape much of the current scholarly discourse include:

Curriculum inquiry may require supplementary interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary methodology. Contemporary interdisciplinary curriculum inquiry ranges across methodologies from the arts and humanities in addition to the full range of social and natural science methods. Narratological principles and literary criticism may be applied to "teaching narratives" (reflecting teacher planning practices and curriculum writing) to shed light on implicit and, perhaps, contradictory curriculum planning processes. Investigation of "good" teaching requires (in addition to knowledge of historical and cultural trends in curriculum and teaching, and developmentally appropriate academic content), familiarity with aesthetic frames of judgment and evaluation, oral storytelling and folklore studies, and anthropological "performance studies" of cultural roles and expectations.

In other circumstances, ethnographic mapping of social interaction in adolescent learning may mix with phenomenological inquiry of teacher perceptions limited by educational, cultural and legal constraints. Studies of the socio-psycholinguistic development of concept learning blends discipline-based study with language learning, linguistic philosophy, developmental psychology, and communication theory. Studying the nature, function, and efficacy of classroom materials in the 21st century requires, in addition to knowledge of subject matter and traditional pedagogy, a critical perspective on media and technology as shaping forces in human learning and culture.

The interdisciplinary, thematic and "problem-centered" character of both method and knowledge in Curriculum Studies separates it from traditional disciplinary study. As with other thematic and problem-centered disciplines (such as Urban Studies, American Studies or Medieval Studies), curriculum research is defined by its fidelity to social and human realities, neither of which can be easily codified nor controlled. The "messiness" of curriculum inquiry, on the other hand, allows for greater understanding of the complexities of the enterprise that is education.

 

Option A. Arts, Humanities, and Social Studies Education

The arts, humanities, and social sciences may all be seen as hermeneutic disciplines, providing codes and meanings through which human action and expression are interpreted. They form the junction where the imagination of the individual citizen and the traditions of his or her society meet. Though culturally saturated, the disciplines which constitute the arts, humanities, and social sciences can no longer be claimed as privileged discourses of particular knowledge, ethnic, or class-based communities. The tension between their historical specificity and formation and their value and use for all peoples, challenges contemporary educators to devise curricula in these areas that incorporate their cultural histories while making them accessible to classrooms of multicultural leaners. This tension is present in determinations regarding assessments of productivity and excellence, relations to leaners' growth and experience, the organization of learning communities, technologies and media, and community-based learning projects and inquiries, and leads to these questions concerning education:

How does one become literate and intellectually sophisticated? What sort of study enables a children or adolescents to reach their potential as individuals and citizens? How can education best assist children and adolescents in accommodating and assimilating society? What does the study of human culture bring to the understanding and development of self in the intersubjective context of social development and interaction?

More pragmatically, work in the arts, humanities, and social studies traditionally addresses essential curricular and instructional issues related to teaching Language Arts (including reading skills and literature study, written communcation, and general critical literacy); History, Geography, and the Social Sciences; Foreign Language and ESL instruction, and Arts Education as a mode of intellectual and cultural development, supported by studio practice. Fundamental developmental issues, which transcend disciplines, such as language development and other forms of cognitive development, are also addressed by research in this area. Studies of "writing to learn" in various disciplines, the effects of multimedia instruction on learning, relations of home and school experiences in early childhood development might be among the many topics of interest to research students electing this option. Such research would is best conducted with a critical understanding of instructional and curricular imperatives identified by practitioners and policy makers in a particular field of interest.

Because these are the disciplines through which human understanding is both expressed and studied, they provide the tools through which the constitution of teaching communities may be studied. Research questions in this area address the ways that daily experience in the arts, humanities, and social sciences is transformed when recoded and organized as curriculum, and the ways that teachers understand their practice relative to these disciplines. Researchers may study how teachers may be educated to develop an analytical stance that frames their own commitments and experience in these areas so that they may extend these knowledge and expression processes to their students with both passion and generosity.

The humanities are expressive forms that have illuminated our collective experience, especially the arts (including their popular forms), philosophy, historiography, criticism and the study of language, and social theory. Because one of the primary objectives of education is to help students obtain a critical, but also aesthetic understanding of the social and cultural environment within which they live, explorations in the multiple cultural traditions that constitute and have enriched contemporary U.S. society should be a major component of the curriculum. These explorations entail a comparative study of some of the salient elements of what has been termed the "Western tradition" with Asian, African, and Native American cultures. The point of the study is to ask what are the universal and what are the specific characteristics of culture.

Students' investigations should begin with those belief systems (both religious and secular world views) that every culture has evolved and which display its conceptions of the cosmos, causal laws, and values, including modern Western concepts of science and ethics. Moreover each culture has a storehouse of stories which, passed down from generation to generation within the family and other institutions of community, constitute its heritage. They include narratives of origin and takes of creation, allegories of rise and decline, and hopes for redemption.

The study of American history and culture in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Studies option should include investigations of the rise, tribulations, and development of U.S. society and culture. To the familiar idea that we are a "nation of immigrants" should be added a disaporic perspective. The prevailing U.S. expectation that, for all cultures, our dominant model should be one assimilation needs to enter into a dialogue with other perspectives.

The underlying premise of this dialogue is the tension between the story of consensus and the many stories of conflict. This tension is played out in an economic, political, and cultural account of the mainsprings of American civilization: the institutions of slavery, regionalism, the corporation, and representative government, and the conflicts between its deeply held belief in individual liberty and the propensity to ask citizens to remain loyal to the underlying religious foundation of America's nationhood. Similarly, even as we extol the virtues of modernity expressed through our prevailing belief in science and technology as the crucial means by which freedom and prosperity may be secuired, our culture remains nostalgic for its warrior past.

These investigations should understand the "peculiar institution" of slavery and the conquest of the continent from Native Americans and other non-English speaking peoples (e.g. the southwest from Mexico) as integral to American economic and cultural development. These historical events help us to understand why W.E.B. DuBois once declared the the "color line" to be the central political and economic question of the 20th century.

More than any other institution or social movement, labor brought to the front burner of American politics and culture the "social question" in the first decades of this century. Education and schooling became, and remain, at once the principal vehicle of reformist hopes, a significant arena for the struggle over social justice and social change, and the source of transmitted forms which frame our present concerns for educational and social transformation. The emergence of the women's movement and the civil rights movements carried these ideas into the last quarter of the century and have already led to enormous changed in accepted social discourse.

The emergence of American popular culture as perhaps the most powerful artistic and social influence in global society may be atttributed to the scientific-technological revolution led by the U.S., but also by the maturing of what some critics and historians have termed "consumer society." Mass-mediated culture has been so closely identified with what it means to be "American, that it is impossible to make a study of contemporary culture without at the same time addressing issues of communications technology and the characteristic forms of popular culture, especially music, television, and the "new media" of email, the internet, and videos.

The traditions of research in education in the humanities begin from early teaching and learning investigations which focussed particularly on the teaching of reading and on language acquisition and development. The classic studies of phonics, silent reading, and reading interests by Thorndike and his students at the beginning of the century founded an entire industry of school reading research which continues today in its politically-charged incarnation as the "whole language vs. phonics" debate. Other long-standing debates in the teaching of English regarding various forms of grammar instruction have now matured into significant studies on the development of writing abilities and constitute another essential research tradition. Current research topics in these areas include, in addition to reading comprehension and the acquisition of writing skills: emergent early literacy, vocabulary acquisition (including in discipline-specific registers), classroom discourse studies of literacy development, critical literacy research, and reader-response and reader-interest studies.

Research in the Social Studies has made significant strides since the heyday of "authoritarian versus democratic" schooling studies in the Progressive era. Research in this area includes studies of enculturation within native and immigrant populations, issues of multiculturalism as both developmental and social constructs, cultural studies of folktales and local communities, as well as any number of studies related to the content of the history and social studies curricula relative to school practice or citizen participation. Specific current topics in Social Studies education include research on the teaching of history and civic education, gender issues and multicultural curricula of inclusion, and studies of the role of education in political socialization, collaborative learning processes, the development of abstract and critical reasoning about social issues, and design of authentic assessment techniques for student learning in the field.

Frequently, the arts are seen simply as an adjunct to humanities study, or as merely "enrichment". Suzanne Langer has observed that the only art form in the regular school curriculum is literature, and it is included only because literature is so easy to treat as something other than art (e.g., a medium for moral and ethical instruction, as cultural literacy or capital, models for writing, reading instruction focused on comprehension, or critical thinking). The result is curriculum models and research questions that neglect an essential area of human development and understanding: aesthetic modes of understanding and representation.

Key twentieth-century philosophical developments promoting aesthetics as necessary for cognitive and social development begin with Suzanne Langer (Feeling and Form) and extend to Maxine Greene's development of Dewey's late-career work into a theory positing aesthetic experience as central to democratic participation. In addition, there have been significant numbers of studies investigating aesthetic response and understanding, ranging from the "scientific aesthetics" research of the first fifty years of this century to post-war phenomenological studies of perception, studies of representational modes in cultural contexts and, most importantly, studies of the development of aesthetic cognition and expression in children and adolescents.

Finally, cross-curricular and interdisciplinary research in the arts and humanities is now often conducted and discussed within a "ways of knowing" framework, popularized by researchers influenced by the key work of Howard Gardner, Jerome Bruner, and Elliot Eisner. This research re-thinks the not only the rationales for various disciplines, but the structure of the disciplines themselves in relation to psychological, social, and cultural criteria.

Concentration electives

For the Arts, Humanities, and Social Studies option we have identified a large number of courses offered at the Graduate Center which can be selected and coherently organized around significant educational themes in these area of Curriculum Studies. We present below a representative listing of such courses. Coherent, thematically organized sets of electives must be approved by a student's Studies Committee.

Representative Listing of Available Elective Courses

The courses listed below will be selectively integrated into the Arts and Humanities curriculum strand. Students will be advised to select existing Graduate School courses in order to facilitate the integration of foundational issues into the research.

Anthro. U702.02 - Readings in Cultural Anthropology II: Complex Societies

Anthro. U704 - Contemporary Anthropological Theory

Anthro. U713.01 - Women in Contemporary Society

Anthro. U728 - Ethnology and Ethnography of the Middle East

Anthro. U729.02 - Anthropology of the USA

Anthro. U733.03 - Ethnology and Ethnography of Latin America

Anthro. U812.02 - Ethnicity and Nationalism

Anthro. U820.01 - Global Capitalism and Culture

[Linguistic anthropology concentration:]

U770. Linguistics

U774. Descriptive semantics

U776. Sociolinguistics

U777. Language and culture

 

Art U703 - Topics in Non-Western Art: Art of the Maya

Art U855 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Modern Art: Postwar European Painting and Sculpture: The Forties and Fifties

Art U895.01 - Seminar: Selected Topics in the History of the Motion Picture: Theories of the Cinema

Art U895.02 - Seminar: Selected Topics in the History of the Motion Picture: Holocaust Film: Memory and Representation

ASCP U820.01 - Civil War Era in Politics, Society, and Culture

Classics U811 - Aristotle

Comp. Lit. U865 - Seminar: Perspectives on Literature and Art: Criticism, History and the Origin of the Work of Art

Comp. Lit. U870 - Seminar: Studies in European Drama: Studies in Tragedy

Comp. Lit. U865 - Seminar: Perspectives on Literature and Art: Criticism, History and the Origin of the Work of Art

 

Eco. U843 - American Economic History

Eco. U844 - European Economic History

 

Ed. Psych. U711 - Cognitive Development and Learning Processes in Education

Ed. Psych. U714 - Instructional Issues: Individual Differences, Group Processes and School Context

Ed. Psych. U862 - Theory and Research in Early Literacy: The Preschool and Early Elementary Years

 

Eng. U740.01 - Romanticism and the Question of Empire

Eng. U748.01 - Before the American Renaissance: Cultural Expression in the New Nation, 1770-1840

Eng. U790.01 - Rethinking Pedagogy: Global Theories and Local Stories

Eng. U804.02 - Early Modern Trans-Atlantic Encounters

Eng. U813.01 - A Century of Social Protest: American Political Drama, 1880-1980

Eng. U861.01 - Black Women's Writing and Cultural Connections

Eng. U863.01 - Between the Wars: Modernism, Literature, Politics

 

Span. U762 - Spanish-American Colonial Literature

 

Hist. U751 - Problems in 19th Century American Cultural History

Hist. U858 - Seminar in American Urban History, 1870-1940

Hist. U760.01 - Modern African History

Hist. U759 - Major Issues in African-American History from Reconstruction to the Present

Hist. U760 - Social Movements in the African Diaspora

Hist. U784 - Science, Religion and Revolution in Early Modern Europe

Hist. U770 - The Colonial Empire

Hist. U709 - Homosexuality, Gender and the Family in Western Society

Hist. U758 - Urban Form and Urban Consciousness in American History

Hist. U755 - Women, Voluntary Associations and Civil Society in the United States, 1790-1930

 

IDS U800.11 - Introduction to Cultural Studies

IDS U842 - Colloquium in Twentieth Century Studies: Ethnoracial Identity, Lesbian and Gay Lives and the Making of Communities

 

Linguistics

U753. Pidgins and creoles

U754. Bilingualism

U761 Sociolinguistics

U762 Language and dialects of urban centers

U765 Pragmatics and discourse analysis

 

MALS U722 - Contemporary Feminist Thought

MALS U782 - The Politics of Contemporary Urban Education

 

Music U830 - Seminar in Ethnomusicology: Topics in World Popular Music

Music U874 - Seminar in Music History: Inventing European Musical Culture

Music U880 - Ethnomusicology/Regional Studies: Immigrant Music in New York City: An Interdisciplinary Approach

 

Phil. U776.02 - Aesthetics (Core)

Phil. U778.02 - Liberalism and Its Critics

 

Pol. Sci. U803.04 - Theories of Human Rights

Pol. Sci. U826.04 - American Political Development

 

Psych. U721 - Developmental Psychology II

Psych. U801 - Seminar in Discourse And Development of Self

Psych. U801 - Research Seminar: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Issues in Psychology

Psych. U801 - Seminar in Social Injustice

 

Soc. U702 - Contemporary Theory

Soc. U800.01 - Selected Topics in Theory: Self And Society

Soc. U868.03 - Sociology of Literature

Soc. U869.02 - Sociology of News

Soc. U847.01 - Selected Topics: Higher Education and Social Inequality

Soc. U732 - Sociology of Gender

Soc. U833 - Selected Topics in Gender: Identity and Social Structure in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Soc. U859 - Selected Topics in Race and Ethnicity: New Immigrants in New York City

Soc. U856 - Selected Topics: Latin American Societies

Soc. U845.01 - Sociology of the State

Soc. U846 - Selected Topics in the State, Social Stratification and Political Economy: The Sociology of Labor

Soc. U725 - Urban Sociology

Soc. U810.02 - Ethnomethodology

 

Theatre U716 - History of Cinema II: 1930 to the Present

Theatre U853.01 - Seminar in a National Theatre: Native American Theatre

 

WSCP U808.02 - Contemporary Feminist Thought

WSCP U810.02 - Selected Topics: Feminism and Political Theory

WSCP U810.05 - Selected Topics: Women, Community, and Public Voice

WSCP U810.06 - Selected Topics: Women's Social Movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America

 

Option B. Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education

Curriculum studies in mathematics, science, and technology education afford rich opportunities for critical, paradigm-shifting research. The former isolation of these fields within the curriculum is being broken down as their privileged epistemological claims are challenged and their common ground with the humanities and social sciences more clearly defined. At the same time, the role of quantitative reasoning and the analysis of continuous variation and co-dependence in the natural sciences and much of applied mathematics raises new questions about their relationships to category-based reasoning in natural language and other discrete code systems.

The study of technology, it has been forcefully argued (e.g. by Latour, Lynch & Woolgar, Law, Star, Knorr-Cetina, and many others in the new science studies fields), offers a bridge between the objectifying stance of traditional positivist science, or idealist mathematics, and the dominant view in the social and human sciences that all human activity, including scientific and mathematical investigation, must be understood in the context of specifical historical cultures and their social functioning, whatever other claims may be made for them. At the same time, gender-based critiques of the historical masculinization of scientific and mathematical practices (e.g. Keller, Haraway, Harding, Walkerdine) offer yet another avenue of reintegration of these disciplines with the larger currents of the social sciences and humanities.

New information and communication technologies hold the promise of enabling students to encounter and analyze phenomena of mathematics and the natural and social world with coordinated multimedia strategies involving verbal, visual, and mathematical reasoning not previously practical in mass education. At the same time they give access to more potential viewpoints and mentors (including artificially intelligent ones), and to far more information on far more subjects that any one student can be expected to study -- thus re-opening the fundamental question of the role of students in the direction of their own learning and the power relationships in society that establish the curriculum canon in science and mathematics no less than in literature or history.

Science and mathematics education have for far too long had a narrowly technical and instrumental view of the field: merely finding better ways to reproduce the existing patterns of learning in science. Today it is possible to make strong critiques of the most fundamental received assumptions about the field and to pioneer radically new alternatives. It is not unrealistic to set as the goal of curriculum studies in science and mathematics education the eventual reintegration of these subjects into the mainstream of students' consciousness, ending their isolation and consequent neglect or rejection by the vast majority of the student population. This is an ambitious and exciting agenda for the decades ahead and for the next generation of doctoral students in the field.

It should be recognized that this Option is not envisioned as a traditional Ph.D. program in science or mathematics education as a narrowly conceived specialization. The MST Option is firmly grounded in the tradition of critical curriculum theory and analysis, just as is work within the Curriculum Studies concentration in the fields of arts, humanities and social studies education.

Research studies undertaken in this program will be primarily concerned with redefining the nature of science and mathematics education and their relations to the rest of the curriculum, with policy issues and values questions in the field, and with the role of technology as both mediator between nature and culture and as medium for learning and teaching in qualitatively new ways. Accordingly students' coursework will take them on exploratory journeys into the disciplinary perspectives of the history and sociology of science and mathematics; science and mathematics in culture; science, mathematics, and gender; and the role of language, discourse, and other semiotic systems in scientific and mathematical meaning-making. The study of scientific and mathematical reasoning can be undertaken conjointly with studies in Developmental and Educational Psychology, and many other interdisciplinary research possibilities will be encouraged.

Students in this program will be expected to have a thorough understanding of at least one specialized scientific, mathematical, or technological discipline. This level will be determined as the equivalent of a Bachelor's degree in one of these fields with at least some advanced work at the Master's degree level. Students may be conditionally accepted for this Option who have strong credentials in other relevant fields, provided that they complete specified studies in mathematics, science, or technology before advancement to candidacy.

From the beginning of their residency, doctoral students electing the MST Option are encouraged to attend the MST Area Colloquium, in which they will meet faculty members active in these fields, discuss with them their research projects, read examples of current literature in the field, and attend lectures by invited guest speakers. After completion of the Core requirements, students may register for the MST Area Seminar, in which systematic reading and discussion of advanced topics of current interest to researchers in the field will guide their formulation of dissertation research proposals. During this period, between the First and Second Examinations, students will take two advanced research methods courses (a program requirement) and a minimum of 21 credits of electives approved by their Studies Committee. These will include individually supervised readings and special topics courses with members of the faculty, as well as courses drawn from two categories: those with primary relevance to MST curriculum studies, and courses in partner disciplines to provide students with the conceptual frameworks and methodological insights of these fields, to be adapted to critical inquiry in MST research. Examples of courses in these latter two categories are provided below.

Group A: Science and mathematics focus

History

U784. Studies in history of science

U785. Problems in history of science

Philosophy

U765-9 Seminars in logic and philosophy of science

Sociology

U802.01 Sociology of science

ESS

U723. History and philosophy of geology

Educational Psychology

U870. Cognitive structures and processes and the development of understanding in mathematics in educational settings

U871. Research on learning and instruction in mathematics

U872. Applied research seminar on problem solving in mathematics

U873. Research on the teaching of mathematics

Computer Science

U760. Introduction to scientific and statistical computing

U703. Practicum on use of computer networks in research

 

Group B: Broader Conceptual Perspectives and Research Methods

Anthropology

U702 Complex Societies.

U704. Contemporary anthropological theory

U705. Research methods

[Linguistic anthropology concentration:]

U770. Linguistics

U774. Descriptive semantics

U776. Sociolinguistics

U777. Language and culture

Economics

U843 American economic history

U844 European economic history

U845. History of special areas

U846. Theories of political economy

 

Educational Psychology

U710 Theories and issues in human development in education

U711. Learning theory and cognitive processes in education

U712. Cognitive and educational development: Research and education

U715. Educational problems in inner city schools

U717. Language and communicative development

U741. Socialization of the school-age child

 

Interdisciplinary Studies

U800. Approaches to study of human language and communication

U801. History and philosophy of social science

U802. Approaches to study of urbanization and urban areas

U803. Approaches to the study of contemporary urban problems in New York City

U804. Readings in urban studies

U806. Interdisciplinary specialization in psychodynamics of political and social behavior

 

Linguistics

U753. Pidgins and creoles

U754. Bilingualism

U761 Sociolinguistics

U762 Language and dialects of urban centers

U765 Pragmatics and discourse analysis

 

Political Science

U700. Quantitative analysis

U713. Research design in political science

U845.1-.9 Selected seminar topics in urban politics

U804.3 Theories of power

U805.3 Organization theory

U724 State and local political institutions

U734. Ethics and decision-making in public policy analysis

U737. Introduction to policy process

U738. Policy analysis

 

Developmental Psychology

U728. Language development

U729. Research methods in human development

U788. Cultural aspects of human development: mind in society

U802.1 Culture and cognition

U802.2 Interpretive methods in the social sciences

 

Psychology

U752. Language and thought

U787. Social cognition

 

Sociology

U810.02 Ethnomethodology

U810.05 The interview

U810.06 Qualitative methods

U812 Field techniques

U815 Topics in qualitative and interpretive methods

U725 Urban sociology

U823.01 Cultural and geographic communities in New York

U829.01 Urban social conflicts

U829.05 Issues in community research

U845.03 Sociology of education

U732 Sociology of gender

U758 Ethnic and racial stratification

U857 Race, ethnicity, and public policy

U768. Introduction to Cultural studies

U869.02 Mass communications research

 

Program Concentration: Policy Studies

 

The Educational Policies Studies Concentration will provide opportunities for doctoral candidates to become knowledgeable about key urban public education policy issues in the United States. The Concentration's central focus will be to study the interaction and conflict among the various social, philosophical, political and economic forces that impact urban public education in America, and to identify effective policy strategies for enhancing student achievement in city schools. The Concentration will provide students with the broad knowledge and research skills they need to analyze, within an integrated socio-political and pedagogical framework, the educational dilemmas that result from the complex interplay of forces at work in urban areas, and to suggest alternative strategies to bring about their resolution.

The Concentration will be grounded in a study of the philosophical, economic (including vocational), political and social (especially social mobility) antecedents of contemporary American education. Graduate students in the Concentration will examine how the universe of potential students comes into being and is transformed over time, the factors which influence school attendance, the competition and allocation of students among private and public schools, and how public policy and private decisions define educational opportunities, the characteristics of schools, the nature of instruction, and, in general, determine the shape of the educational landscape in our cities.

The above analysis will help students to identify key policy questions in urban education. These questions will form the substance of student research in the Concentration: the who, what when, why, how, and how much of educational policy.

The Educational Policy Studies Concentration will make use of urban education case studies (some of which will be developed by program faculty and students), policy simulation exercises, and structured field experiences, including internships, in the schools and other education-affiliated agencies in the New York metropolitan area. Topics to be studied will include the politics of local education, school governance, equity and resource allocation, student access to educational opportunities, alternative educational programs, assessment and evaluation of student learning outcomes, and the web or relationships which link educational policy to curriculum and instruction.

All candidates in the Education Ph.D. program will participate in an internship as part of Core Course 5: Education Policy and Politics. Students who elect the Educational Policy Option will have additional opportunities for internships and participant observations during the time that they are engaged in their elective course studies. Such field experiences, under the direction of a Faculty Advisor and each student's Study Committee, will serve to ground theory and concepts of educational policy-making in real-world contexts, and will help candidates to identify the research problems that they will address in their dissertations.

Elective course work, field experiences and selection of dissertation topic will be guided by the research focus of the Educational Policy Option. This option will concentrate on the critical need to conceptualize and evaluate alternative models to the present policy framework of American public education. The failure to critically examine alternative policy paradigms has led to weakness and confusion in school reform efforts. It has had a particularly devastating impact in urban areas where the weakness of old paradigms have become most evident, where legitimacy of the existing system is most severely questioned, alternative visions of viable public schools have yet to be fully elaborated or widely accepted, and the models which have been proposed (and a few implemented) have yet to be validated.

The conceptualization and evaluation of alternative education policy paradigms will be the central research focus of the Educational Policy Option, as well as a central consideration in the research agendas of the other Education Ph.D. Options. Tentative first steps in systemic, paradigmatic educational reform can be seen in recent policy initiatives in New York State, Kentucky and the U.S. Department of Education. However, there is serious concern that these new initiates will fail if conceptual and empirical work is not undertaken, quickly and well, to inform, support, and sustain efforts of educational improvement and renewal. The research agenda of this program can help to build an informed consensus in support of new educational paradigms, regenerate loyalty to public education, and offer guidance in the difficult task of implementing enhanced forms of public education.

 

SAMPLE LIST OF COURSES CREDITABLE TOWARD THE CONCENTRATION

(Does not include advanced methods courses, see below, or Area Seminars and Program Electives, see section 9)

Anthropology

U701 - Core Course in Cultural Anthropology I

U702 - Core Course in Cultural Anthropology II

U729.02 - Anthropology of the USA

U812.02 - Ethnicity and Nationalism

U820.01 - Global Capitalism and Culture

Economics

U701 - Microeconomics I

U702 - Microeconomics II

U711 - Macroeconomics I

U712 - Macroeconomics II

U841 - Economic Development I

Educational Psychology

U714 - Instructional Issues: Individual Differences, Group Processes and School Context

U719 - Theory and Applicants of Behavioral Techniques in Educational Settings

U731 - Evaluation Research

U832 - Theory and Research in Early Literacy: The Preschool and Early Elementary Years

History

U702 - The Problem of Synthesis in American History

U751 - Problems in 19th Century American Cultural History

U754 - A Civilization and its Discontents: American Politics, Culture and Society, 1910-1940

U757 - Race, Health and Violence in Urban America, 1945-1980

U858 - Seminar in American Urban History, 1870-1940

U759 - Major Issues in African-American History from Reconstruction to the Present

U760 - Social Movements in the African Diaspora

U709 - Homosexuality, Gender and the Family in Western Society

U758 - Urban Form and Urban Consciousness in American History

U755 - Women, Voluntary Associations and Civil Society in the Unites States, 1790-1930

Interdisciplinary Seminars

U800.11 - Introduction to Cultural Studies.

U842 - Colloquium in Twentieth Century Studies: Ethnoracial Identity, Lesbian and Gay Lives and the Making of Communities

Political Science

U729.01 - The Federalist Papers

U822.02 - Civil Liberties

U826.02 - Citizen Participation, Community Organization and Public Policy

U826.04 - American Political Development

U846.01 - Making Good Decisions, Exercising Skilled Leadership: Theory and Practice

U731 - Public Organizations

U739 - Policy Implementation: Comparative Perspectives

U739.07 - Urban Policy

Environmental Psychology

U801 - Seminar in Participatory Design of Learning Environments: Revisiting/Redefining/Redesigning Places for Learning

Industrial and Organizational Psychology

U801 - Diversity in Organizations

Sociology

U702 - Contemporary Theory

U847.01 - Selected Topics: Higher Education and Social Inequality

U732 - Sociology of Gender

U859 - Selected Topics in Race and Ethnicity: New Immigrants in New York City

U845.01 - Sociology of the State

U846 - Selected Topics in the State, Social Stratification and Political Economy: the Sociology of Labor

U725 - Urban Sociology

U828 - Selected Topics in Urban and Community Studies: Seminar on Urban Violence

Notes:

1. Policy Concentration courses will be selected by the candidate in consultation with the student's Advisor or Studies Committee. A candidate will be expected to cluster his/her course selections in a few departments rather than take single courses scattered among all related disciplinary fields.

2. Before a course is formally placed on the elective list, discussions will be held with the Executive Officer of a department to determine the appropriateness of a course for candidates in the "PhD. Program in Education: Educational Policy Concentration," taking into account especially any course prerequisites.

 

RESEARCH METHODS COURSES: Sample Selection Lists

Students in all concentrations and options are required to take at least one course from list A and one from list B. Course selection must be approved by the Advisor or Studies Committee.

A. Qualitative-Interpretive and Combined Disciplinary Methods

Anthropology

U705. Research methods

[Linguistic anthropology concentration:]

U774. Descriptive semantics

U776. Sociolinguistics

Art History

U700. Methods of research

Developmental Psychology

U729. Research methods in human development

U802.2 Interpretive methods in the social sciences

English

U795 Theory and practice of literary scholarship and criticism

U796 Theory and practice of textual scholarship

History

U702, U703 The writing of history

Linguistics

U765. Pragmatics and discourse analysis

Political Science

U713. Research design in political science

Sociology

U710, U711 Methods of sociological research

U810.05 The interview

U810.06 Qualitative methods

U812 Field techniques

U815 Topics in qualitative and interpretive methods

 

B. Quantitative and Statistical Methods

 

Educational Psychology

U705, 706 Statistics and computer programming I and II

U707 Research methods in educational psychology

Political Science

U700. Quantitative analysis

Psychology

U705, U706 Statistical methods in psychology I, II

U780 Quantitative methods in psychology

Sociology

U715, U716 Sociological statistics I, II

Economics

U821 Econometrics I

U823 Applied microeconometrics