Power, Politics, and Schooling: National and Global Contestations

Catalog description

What is the purpose of education in societies aspiring to democracy? How has that purpose been conceived and realized, across cultures and time? How do current educational practices and policies reflect, achieve, or fail to advance schooling's democratic purposes? Students take up these questions by critically analyzing school reform as a site of political, economic, and cultural struggle, examining the history, players, and ideologies configuring contemporary controversies in national and international education policy. Students evaluate assumptions underlying school reforms; interests of constituencies advancing change; and the likely intended and unintended consequences, especially for historically marginalized groups.