Course Offerings List
This course explores the intellectual history of scientific racism, paying close attention to how its theories influence power and institutions today. Reading primary sources from the history of science, each class will trace the reverberations of scientific racism in media, education, politics, law, and global health. Our conversations will consistently analyze the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and age in the legacies of scientific racism. We will also examine the impact of scientific racism in public discourse about the Black Lives Matter Movement and collectively brainstorm for activism towards restorative justice.
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), 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.
What's the point of education? What should anyone truly learn, why, and how? Who gets to attend school? Is it a right, a privilege, a duty, an investment, or a form of discipline? Do schools level the playing field or entrench inequalities? Should they fashion workers, citizens, or individuals? Moving from France to the US, and from the Enlightenment to the present, we look at the vexed but crucial relationship between education and democracy in novels, films, essays, and philosophy, examining both the emancipatory and repressive potential of modern schooling. Topics include: Brown, class, meritocracy, testing, and alternative pedagogies.
This course surveys the history of cities in the United States from colonial settlement to the present. Over centuries, cities have symbolized democratic ideals of "melting pots" and cutting-edge innovation, as well as urban crises of disorder, decline, crime, and poverty. Urban life has concentrated extremes like rich and poor; racial and ethnic divides; philanthropy and greed; skyscrapers and parks; violence and hope; downtown and suburb. The course examines how cities in U.S. history have brokered revolution, transformation and renewal, focusing on class, race, gender, immigration, capitalism, and the built environment.
This course explores the history, culture, and language of the Deaf in the United States. The first part of the course focuses on the history of Deaf people in the United States. The second part discusses various aspects of Deaf culture: language, literature, art, politics, etc. The third part critically examines different issues facing Deaf people here in the United States and around the world. These issues include audism, linguicism, ableism, intersectionality, disability rights, bioethics, and education. No American Sign Language knowledge required.
Voting rights and election rules, education, health and welfare, and redistricting are just a few domains where U.S. states have broad policymaking authority. Across these and other issues, policies vary from state to state leaving a patchwork of public policy. This course examines why and how public policy and governing institutions differ across states and considers the implications of political polarization and policy fragmentation. Broad themes include federalism, political institutions, and participation. Topics include federal-state and state-local relations, interstate competition, elections, and direct democracy.
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?
The course will survey discoveries and progress made over the past 50 years of research, from classic experimental findings and fundamental theoretical principles to the cutting edge of research that lies increasingly at the interface of psychology with neuroscience (neural mechanisms underlying cognitive processes), computer science (artificial intelligence and machine learning), and mathematics (formal models of complex processes). Topics will include perception, attention, memory, decision making, reasoning, problem solving, language, and cognitive control.
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.
For the last 60 years, the United States has been engaged in a near-constant effort to reform American schools. In this course, we will make sense of competing explanations of educational performance and evaluate the possibilities for and barriers to improving American public schools and for reducing educational disparities by family socioeconomic status, race, and gender. In doing so, we will grapple with the challenges that researchers and practitioners face in evaluating educational policies.
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.
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 institutions since the civil rights era.
The course examines major moral controversies in public life and differing concepts of justice, the common good and civic virtues. It seeks to help students think and write about the ethical considerations that ought to shape public institutions and guide public authorities. These issues may include equal treatment of cultures and nations, justice in war, market regulation (incl. crypto), the virtues of citizens in a capitalist society, property rights, women's rights in developing countries, fairness in a world of digital technology, and cross-border migration.
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 22 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 403 is designed to complement TPP 404, Clinical Practice. The course is structured by four themes: The Learner and Learning, Content Knowledge: Planning Instruction and Assessment, Instructional Practice and Pedagogy, and Professional Responsibilities. Major course assignments address these themes through a focus on the research and practice of meeting the needs of exceptional learners. The course is designed to help students connect theory and practice, become self-reflective practitioners, use data from formative and summative assessments to inform instruction, and to prepare them for full-time student teaching.
TPP 404 (complements TPP 403) is a 175-hour assignment as a student teacher in a local middle or high school, w/approximately 20 hours of clinical work per week over 12 weeks. Students assume increasing control of instruction with 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 course objectives 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.
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.