Education Studies

Department Website:
https://www.haverford.edu/education

The Bryn Mawr/Haverford Education Department centers teaching and learning as fundamental to human life and growth, and intrinsically connected to struggles for understanding, liberation, and justice. With a primary focus on relationships, facilitation, and change as the heart of the study and practice of education, we address our students as past, current, and future stakeholders of public education systems, as participants in many other systems and structures, and as prospective teachers, school leaders, researchers, policy makers, activists, artists, and theorists. Defining teaching and learning as social, political, and cultural as well as personal activities, the Education Department challenges students to explore the relationships among schooling and other contexts of learning, human development, and social change as they gain knowledge and skills of educational theory and practice. Consult the Student Guidebook and the FAQs for detailed information about declaring a major or a minor in Education Studies.

Learning Goals

In keeping with the partnership ethos of the Education Department, the learning outcomes for students who pursue a major or minor in Education Studies are a combination of outcomes conceptualized by Education Department faculty and staff and outcomes identified by students for themselves, informed by College-wide learning goals.
Department commitments include supporting students in:

• developing skills for critical and contextual self-reflection 
• integrating interdisciplinary theory and practical approaches to education study, research, and facilitation
• engaging in partnership and collaboration in different forms across different contexts
• transforming educational practice for deep learning, equity, inclusion, and justice
• pursuing, assessing/reflecting on (in the present), and committing to (in the future) deep learning in—and deep learning as—relational, pedagogical, and organizational processes

 As they move through the course offerings, students will come to understand that:

• everyone is a teacher and a learner, and knowledge is co-created through experience, study, intervention/experiment, and reflection
• inequities are structured into educational systems as well as perpetuated by practices
• teaching and learning are fundamental to human life and fundamentally connected to struggles for liberation
• students have both agency in and accountability for making education inclusive and equitable
• strong and effective learning occurs in contexts ranging from formal to informal settings, and is well supported in circumstances that present high challenge and low threat
• people learn by connecting prior knowledge and experiences to new knowledge and experiences, through a recursive process of learning, unlearning, and recommitting
• education is woven into the history of individual development and also of the built environment and the social, political, and cultural frameworks of life

Across education courses, students will engage in:

• iteratively examining, affirming, and interrogating their educational experiences, past and present, in order to clarify how those inform their philosophical and practical commitments
• exploring a wide range of educational theories and traditions, including experiential and constructivist approaches (John Dewey), critical pedagogy (Paulo Freire), culturally sustaining practices (Ladson-Billings), education as the practice of freedom (bell hooks) and freedom dreaming (Fred Moten, Robin Kelley), anti-racist education (Bettina Love), decolonizing education (la paperson, Eve Tuck), and more to make informed choices about their practices
• distinguishing and describing varying purposes and standards for education, and practicing assessing and supporting those standards in partnership contexts
• building capacity to promote educational justice 
• authoring numerous statements of educational purpose—as students within the BiCo, as aspiring educators, as community members
• developing a set of skills and commitments that facilitate individual and collaborative learning and align with their purpose

In capstone courses, students will, depending on the emphasis they choose, document in their final portfolios how they have met the outcomes above through their experiences studying and enacting research, policy, and practice in their chosen area of specialization

Haverford’s Institutional Learning Goals are available on the President’s website, at http://hav.to/learninggoals.

Curriculum

Students may complete a major or a minor in Education Studies. For students pursuing a major, specialization is required. Within the overarching frame of Research, Policy, and Practice, specialization options are Elementary Education, Secondary Education, Secondary Education with Certification, Higher Education, and Out-of-School Contexts. Alumnae may also complete the requirements for secondary teacher certification after they graduate through the Post-baccalaureate Teacher Education Program. 

In the minor, students may choose between the minor in Education Studies and the minor in Education Studies leading to secondary teacher certification. In the minor, students can opt into a specialization within Education if it suits their goals.

Please note that Education courses are offered at both Bryn Mawr and Haverford every semester. Therefore, be sure to check course listings on both campuses as you are making your course selections.