Course Offerings List
Who decided which first names are deemed "difficult to pronounce?" Why are the words "fear," "ignorance," "belief," and "guilt" used to normalize racism? Why do history textbooks avoid the use of the word "genocide" when addressing Atlantic slavery? This course explores the recent intellectual history of the role of naming and coded language in institutional anti-Blackness. Each class will analyze how structures of power have intentionally erased their histories and contemporary acts of racial oppression through linguistic and epistemic control, while also paying close attention to the language of resistance in Black activism.
Open to graduate students from all disciplines who have already taught (or will teach during the seminar semester) at Princeton. The course engages in critical discussions of current scholarship in the fields of learning and pedagogy, with opportunities to apply new pedagogical approaches in their own teaching. Participants refine their understanding of teaching as they reflect meaningfully on the approaches and skills gained in their own disciplines as part of a liberal arts education.
To provide a general overview of labor markets. Covering labor force participation, the allocation of time to market work, migration, labor demand, investment in human capital (education, on-the-job training, man-power training), discrimination, unions and unemployment. The course will also examine the impact of government programs (such as unemployment insurance, minimum wages, or a negative income tax) on the labor market.
Voting rights and election rules, education, health and welfare, and redistricting are just a few domains where U.S. states have broad policymaking authority. This course examines why and how public policy and governing institutions vary across states and considers the implications for citizens. Broad themes include federalism, political institutions, and participation. Topics include federal-state and state-local relations, interstate competition and cooperation, parties and elections, redistricting, and direct democracy. This course also examines public policy in health and welfare, education, budgeting, the environment, and immigration.
This course examines various political controversies that surround the role of race and ethnicity in American society. These controversies and issues affect public opinion, political institutions, political behavior, and salient public policy debates. Thus this course will assess and evaluate the role of race in each of these domains while also examining historical antecedents. The first half of the course will focus on historical antecedents such as the civil rights movement and the Black Power movement. The second half of the course will focus on the role of race in the 2008-2020 presidential elections.
Babies, who look like helpless blobs, are capable of impressive feats of learning. 3-year-olds, who can't cross the street alone, know an astounding amount of information about their environments. We will focus on landmark studies that elucidate how children's biology, cognition, language, and social experiences interact to set the stage for what we do and who we are. Is the baby's world a 'blooming, buzzing confusion', or do babies enter the world prepared to make sense of their environments? How can we understand the collaboration between nature and nurture during development?
Principles of psychology relevant to the theory and practice of education. Through selected readings, discussion, and classroom observations, students study theories of development, learning, cognition (including literacy), and motivation, as well as individual and group differences in these areas; assessment; and the social psychology of the classroom. The course focuses on how learning by children and adolescents at the elementary, middle, and secondary school levels is influenced by their own characteristics and experiences and the various contexts in which they learn: family, school, community and culture.
This seminar will focus on the social and psychological experiences of people who possess (or are believed to possess) some attribute, or characteristic, that conveys a social identity that is devalued in a particular social context. A variety of topics will be discussed, including: how stigmatized individuals view their identities in society; the mental and cognitive consequences of being a member of a stigmatized group; how stigmatized individuals cope with their stigmatization; and interactions between stigmatized and nonstigmatized individuals.
This course will introduces students to the discipline of sociology (the systematic study of human groups, institutions and societies). Students will learn the major theoretical approaches within the field as well as the diverse research methods used in sociological investigations. These tools will be applied to a wide variety of special topics studied by sociologists, including family, work, education, religion and social movements, as well as dynamics of class, gender, race and ethnic inequalities within and across countries.
This course is an introduction to the logic and practice of social science research. The goal is to provide methodological training that will enable students to design and execute successful independent research projects. We review a range of approaches used by sociologists to answer research questions, including field experiments, surveys, observation, in-depth interviews, and mixed method research.
Analyzes the historical construction of race as a concept in American society, how and why this concept was institutionalized publicly and privately in various arenas of U.S. public life at different historical junctures, and the progress that has been made in dismantling racialized institutios since the civil rights era.
The course examines major moral controversies in public life and differing conceptions of justice and the common good. It seeks to help students develop the skills required for thinking and writing about the ethical considerations that ought to shape public institutions, guide public authorities, and inform the public's judgments. The course will focus on issues that are particularly challenging for advanced, pluralist democracies such as the USA, including justice in war, terrorism and torture, markets and distributive justice, immigration, refugees, and criminal justice.
This course is designed to describe the policies defining the provision of educational services with special attention to the context of the US and Latin America. The focus will be on policies that have implications for understanding inequality in education and income through the lens of economic theory of human capital. The course topics will include governance, accountability, choice, finance, and personnel policies for K-12 education, with a focus on the role of teachers; it will also briefly cover issues related to early childhood education and higher education. Class sessions are a mixture of lectures and student-led discussions.
A study of essential methods of learning and teaching, including learner characteristics and needs, organization and structure of educational institutions, development of curriculum and instructional goals, preparation of evaluation and assessment, and design of subject/level specific methodologies and classroom management techniques. Required course work includes 18 hours of site-based field experience and evening laboratory sessions. Students should have one morning of unscheduled time available each week to allow for school visits. The course is open to any student who has an interest in teaching.
TPP 404 is a 175-hour assignment as a student teacher in a local middle or high school, with approximately 20 hours of clinical work per week over 12 weeks. Students assume increasing control of instruction with the support of a host teacher, and the experience culminates with the design and delivery of a small unit of instruction. Assignments include research on the classroom and school context and an analysis of the unit of instruction taught in the final weeks of the semester. The objectives of the course focus on the role of classroom context in the teaching and learning process; instructional planning; and teacher reflection.
The Seminar on Education-Theory and Practice is designed to intersect with and compliment Practice Teaching (TPP 406). Students will read and reflect on educational research and reflect on how to best integrate theory and practice in the reality of their school setting. Students investigate the processes of curriculum development and implementation, develop learning goals and lesson plans, and learn strategies for measuring student learning by applying both formative and summative assessments. Prerequisite: permission from the Director of Teacher Certification. Students enroll in the seminar concurrently with TPP 406.
Supervised practice teaching (a minimum of 12 weeks) in a local school. Teaching is done under the supervision of an accomplished teacher and a program staff member who regularly observes and discusses the student's practice teaching. Students gain firsthand experience in developing teaching strategies, planning and differentiating instruction, assessing student learning, and classroom management. Must be taken concurrently with TPP 405.