EDST 310: Practicum in Education Studies
This seminar is intended to help students develop the skills to learn from experience in educational settings, through rigorous reflection, analysis, scholarly inquiry into educational questions, and action/implementation of new ideas. It is designed for students with previous coursework in education, experience in educational settings, or both. Students will be placed in a variety of educational settings in the community and each student will craft an independent study, with ongoing guidance from the professor and from the group, related to their placement. Class sessions will be seminar-style with students sharing and workshopping their studies and their practice. There will be group readings on aspects of education studies including reflective practice, classroom ethnography/teacher research, and observational techniques, but students will also develop individualized reading lists according to the focus of their independent study. In addition to ongoing written work in the form of analytic journals and critical reading synopses, students will complete an individualized final paper or project integrating their research and experience over the semester, and give a final presentation.