Diversity, Pedagogy, and Visual Culture

Catalog description

A ED 225 Diversity, Pedagogy, and Visual Culture (3) (GA;US)(BA) meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This course is an examination of diversity, pedagogy, and visual culture using interdisciplinary approaches and research drawn from various disciplines including art education, history, sociology, cultural studies, and gender studies to explore issues of diversity in various contexts: schools, social media, and cultural institutions such as museums and arts organizations. This course will be structured to accommodate the needs of diverse learners through collaborations, peer presentations, video presentations, discussions, critiques, and lectures. Audio visuals, videos, visual culture artifacts, film clips, slides, and other visual projections are integral to the course, and will be used to vividly illustrate the issues and topics addressed in the presentations and readings. These provide multiple perspectives from various sources. A primary goal of this course is to promote a critical understanding of oneself as a social being (i.e., identity formation) through reflection and the examination of one's immediate experiences, and by asking critical questions about existing social arrangements and relationships between diverse groups. By participating in the course, students will gain a greater understanding of self as having been socialized and acculturated in very particular ways, and how that affects the ways in which they think about themselves, their future careers, and relationships with other people and institutions within society. By the end of this course, students will have a greater understanding of diversity as broadly defined in relationship to visual culture. Students will also be able to critically explore issues of race, gender, class, ability, religion, and sexual identity, among others, and the pedagogical challenges and opportunities posed by such diversity.