Courses at TC

Course Descriptions

ITSF 4091: Comparative Education

This course provides an overview of the history, methods, major concepts, and current trends in comparative education. We take examples from the broad range of research methodologies and disciplinary perspectives represented in the field of comparative education, including multivariate, social scientific, interpretive, ethnographic, sociohistorical, and political-economic traditions. We examine locally to globally comparative case studies as we consider the remarkable diversity within contemporary educational systems that are subject to global political and economic forces. The assignments are designed to help students develop their academic literacy, especially skills such as critical reading, library research, and oral and written presentation of concepts and literatures.

ITSF 4013: Literacy and Development

What is the relationship between literacy and development - specifically, economic, political, social, and/or cognitive development? In this course, we examine popular definitions of "literacy" and "development" even as we question the assumption that they are causally related. Adopting a social approach to literacy and language, we read histories of literacy traditions and contemporary, cross-cultural ethnographies of literacy instruction and extra-scholastic literacy practices in order to place literacy and development in historical, social, and cultural contexts. To do this work, we rely on concepts from and debates in anthropology, sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics, as well as critical studies of development.

ITSF 5007: Race, Class, and Schooling: Ethnography of Immigration and Education

This course examines the role of schooling in the formation of race and class structures. We explore a range of theories regarding the relationship between race, class, and schooling, including cultural-ecological theory, social reproduction theory, cultural production theory, social constructivism, and critical race theory. We will concentrate on materials specific to the educational experiences of immigrant youth. In the midst of reading theoretical articles and empirical research, students will, with immigrant youth in the New York area, engage in a qualitative investigation of the relationship between race, class, and schooling. This exercise serves several purposes. Primarily, it provides students with an opportunity to learn and apply basic ethnographic methods in a guided setting. Further, it encourages students to compare the relationship between schooling, race, and class.

ITSF 6590: Doctoral Seminar: Qualitative Research Methods

This doctoral seminar, designed for students who are planning their dissertation work, focuses on a range of qualitative research methods. We examine a variety of theoretical and methodological paradigms as well as the dialectical process of data collection and data analysis. We consider a range of approaches to data collection - mixed models/mixed methods, comparative methods, surveys, case studies, ethnography, and action research - and we learn and employ various data collection and data analysis techniques - among them, surveys, focus groups, interviewing, observing, using documents, indexing, coding, data management, narrative analysis, and content analysis.

While students read articles and book chapters from the methodological literature, their primary text will be each other's work. That is, the course work centers on students' own research designs and, for those who have them, findings from preliminary or pilot research. Students will spend the majority of our time applying concepts and techniques from the literature to their own and each other's research methodologies.

Education for Social Change: Comparative and International Perspectives

What is education for social change? What is popular education? How is it implemented internationally? Using a comparative and international perspective, this course explores theories and practices of popular education, a pedagogical-political approach based on participatory methodologies that is committed to schooling for social justice. Popular education addresses issues of knowledge and power and promotes among learners a critical analysis of reality together with community organizing for progressive social change.  In this course, we will examine theoretical debates on popular education. We will also compare historical and contemporary examples of popular education practices, methods and techniques.

Teachers College, Columbia University.