Instructor: Micere Keels
Term: Autumn
Mondays 1:30-4:20

The problems confronting urban schools are bound to the social, economic, and political conditions of the urban environments in which schools reside. Thus, this course will explore social, economic, and political issues, with an emphasis on issues of race and class as they have affected the distribution of equal educational opportunities in urban schools. We will focus on the ways in which family, school, and neighborhood characteristics intersect to shape the divergent outcomes of low- and middle-income children residing with any given neighborhood. Students will tackle an important issue affecting the residents and schools in one Chicago neighborhood. This course is part of the College Course Cluster: Urban Design.

Instructor: Lisa Rosen
Term: Autumn 
Tuesdays 12:30-3:20

How and why do educational outcomes and experiences vary across student populations? What role do schools play in a society’s system of stratification? How do schools both contribute to social mobility and to the reproduction of the prevailing social order? This course examines these questions through the lens of social and cultural theory, engaging current academic debates on the causes and consequences of social inequality in educational outcomes. We will engage these debates by studying foundational and emerging theories and examining empirical research on how social inequalities are reproduced or ameliorated through schools. Through close readings of historical, anthropological and sociological case studies of schooling in the U.S, students will develop an understanding of the structural forces and cultural processes that produce inequality in neighborhoods and schools, how they contribute to unequal opportunities, experiences, and achievement outcomes for students along lines of race/ethnicity, class, gender, and immigration status, and how students themselves navigate and interpret this unequal terrain. We will cover such topics as neighborhood and school segregation; peer culture; social networks; elite schooling; the interaction between home, society and educational institutions; and dynamics of assimilation for students from immigrant communities.

Instructor: Marshall Jean
Term: Autumn
Tuesdays & Thursdays 3:30-4:50

This course examines the social organization of formal education – how schools are shaped by the social context in which they are situated, and how students’ experiences in turn shape our society. It focuses specifically on schools as the link between macrosociological phenomena (e.g. culture, political systems, segregation, inequality) and the microsociological interactions of individual students and educators. The focus will be on contemporary American education, although lessons from the past and abroad will inform our learning. Prior introductory coursework in sociology will be useful but is not required.

Instructor: Ariel Kalil
Term: Autumn
Mondays and Wednesdays 1:30-2:50

The goal of this course is to introduce students to the literature on early child development and explore how an understanding of core developmental concepts can inform social policies. This goal will be addressed through an integrated, multidisciplinary approach. The course will emphasize research on the science of early child development from the prenatal period through school entry. The central debate about the role of early experience in development will provide a unifying strand for the course. Students will be introduced to research in neuroscience, psychology, economics, sociology, and public policy as it bears on questions about “what develops?”, critical periods in development, the nature vs. nurture debate, and the ways in which environmental contexts (e.g., parents, families, peers, schools, institutions, communities) affect early development and developmental trajectories. The first part of the course will introduce students to the major disciplinary streams in the developmental sciences and the enduring and new debates and perspectives within the field. The second part will examine the multiple contexts of early development to understand which aspects of young children’s environments affect their development and how those impacts arise. Throughout the course, we will explore how the principles of early childhood development can guide the design of policies and practices that enhance the healthy development of young children.

Instructor: Lin Bian
Term: Autumn
Tuesdays 12:30-3:20

Inequality within and across social groups has risen sharply in the past few decades. What are the early traces and psychological mechanisms of this pervasive phenomenon? In this seminar, we will discuss these questions from multiple angles, integrating developmental, social and cognitive psychology. Specifically, this course will cover topics in early social cognition, including social categorization, essentialism, structural reasoning, normative reasoning, stereotypes and prejudice, etc. Students will evaluate past studies throughout the course and propose original research at the end.

Instructor: Katherine O’Doherty
Term: Autumn
Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:30-1:50

This discussion-based, advanced seminar is designed to investigate how preschool and elementary students think, act, and learn, as well as examine developmentally appropriate practices and culturally responsive teaching in the classroom. This course emphasizes the application of theory and research from the field of psychology to the realm of teaching and learning in contemporary classrooms. Course concepts will be grounded in empirical research and activities geared towards understanding the nuances and complexities of topics such as cognitive development (memory, attention, language), early assessment systems, standardized testing, “mindset”, “grit”, exercise/nutrition, emotion regulation, and more.

Instructor: Steve Raudenbush
Term: Autumn
Tuesdays/Thursdays 9:30-10:50

This course has two purposes. First, using nationally representative US surveys, we’ll examine the early emergence of educational inequality and its evolution during adolescence and adulthood. We’ll ask about the importance of social origins (parent social status, race/ethnicity, gender, and language) in predicting labor market outcomes. We’ll study the role that education and plays in shaping economic opportunity, beginning in early childhood. We’ll ask at what points interventions might effectively advance learning and reduce inequality.

Second, we’ll gain mastery over some important statistical methods required for answering these and related questions. Indeed, this course provides an introduction to quantitative methods and a foundation for other methods courses in the social sciences. We consider standard topics: graphical and tabular displays of univariate and bivariate distributions, an introduction to statistical inference, and commonly arising applications such as the t‐test, the two‐way contingency table, analysis of variance, and regression. However, all statistical ideas and methods are embedded in case studies including a national survey of adult labor force outcomes, a national survey of elementary school children, and a national survey that follows adolescents through secondary school into early adulthood. Thus, the course will consider all statistical choices and inferences in the context of the broader logic of inquiry with the aim of strengthening our understanding of that logic as well as of the statistical methods.

Instructor: Ming-Te Wang
Term: Autumn
Tuesdays 9:30-12:20

This course focuses on developmental pathways from middle childhood through adolescence within the context of school, family, community, and culture. Because human development is an applied field, we will be paying special attention to how sociocultural and historical influences affect academic, socioemotional, and identity development in the context of real-world challenges and opportunities faced by adolescents. In addition to learning about developmental and sociocultural theories, students will apply research to policy and practice by creating resources geared toward youth, parents, or those who work with youth. By the end of this course sequence, students should be able to:
1. Describe and apply key theories of middle childhood and adolescent development;
2. Identify developmental opportunities and challenges during middle childhood and adolescence;
3. Discuss the role of identity development in constructing or authoring one’s life story;
4. Reframe adolescent risk-taking as a form of creativity and individual expression;
5. Understand how relationships can influence positive youth development; and
6. Translate theory and research into developmentally appropriate and culturally sensitive resources for youth, families, and those who work with youth.

Instructor: Chiara Galli
Term: Winter
Mondays 1:30-2:50pm

This course aims to expose students to a variety of examples of well-designed social research addressing questions of great interest and importance. One goal is clarify what it means to do “interesting” research. A second goal is to appreciate the features of good research design. A third goal is to examine the variety of research methodologies in the social sciences, including ethnography, clinical case interviewing, survey research, experimental studies of cognition and social behavior, behavior observations, longitudinal research, and model building. The general emphasis is on what might be called the aesthetics of well-designed research.

Instructor: K. O’Doherty
Term: Winter

M/W 9:30-10:20am

This is an introductory course in developmental psychology, with a focus on cognitive and social development in infancy through early childhood. Example topics include children’s early thinking about number, morality, and social relationships, as well as how early environments inform children’s social and cognitive development. Where appropriate, we make links to both philosophical inquiries into the nature of the human mind, and to practical inquiries concerning education and public policy.

Instructor: Numanbayraktaroglu
Term: Winter
Tu/Thu 11:00am-12:20pm

This course provides an overview of theory and research on bilingualism. Through a critical examination of psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic approaches to bilingualism, we will aim to arrive at a comprehensive account of bilingual experience and its practical implications for education and mental health in a globalizing world.

In the course, we will address the following topics:
1. Theoretical and methodological foundations of bilingualism and multilingualism.
2. Bilingual and multilingual society, super-diversity, and translanguaging.
3. The relationship between bilingualism and cognition, emotion, and self.
4. Code-switching and identity.
5. Implications of bilingualism for education.

It is expected that, by the end of the course, you will develop a comprehensive understanding of bilingualism and multilingualism and apply this knowledge to your academic and professional context.

Instructor: Eve Ewing
Term: Winter

T/Th 11:00-12:20pm

This course will provide a broad overview of current work in psychology and neuroscience related to attention and working memory. We will discuss evidence for sharp capacity limits in an individual’s ability to actively monitor and maintain information in an “online” mental state. Readings will be primarily based on original source articles from peer-reviewed journals, with a focus on behavioral and neural approaches for measuring and understanding these basic cognitive processes.

Instructor: Max Cuddy
Term: Winter

M/W 1:30-2:50pm

This course critically examines how power and culture operate within educational systems. This course will presume that education is not simply a neutral good that we must acquire to gain social mobility. Instead, educational systems are sites where power is enacted and where culture is learned (or suppressed). Thus, this course will ask important questions like: What type of education gets you power? What is the normative culture of education (schooling)? Do you need to perform a certain type of culture to accrue educational power? Who has power over educational systems? How is education wielded as a tool of power? Can educational systems be sites of challenging power? To answer these questions, we will read a range of educational scholars, sociologists, historians, anthropologists, and social theorists. We will pay particular attention to the many lines of difference that stratify educational systems, such as: race, indigeneity, gender, sexuality, class, nationality, and disability.

Instructor: Lisa Rosen
Term: Winter
Tuesdays 3:30-6:20pm

This course examines the dynamic relations between schooling and identity. We will explore how schools both enable and constrain the identities available to students and the consequences of this for academic achievement. We will examine these relations from multiple disciplinary perspectives, applying psychological, anthropological, sociological, and critical theories to understanding how students not only construct identities for themselves within schools, but also negotiate the identities imposed on them by others. Topics will include the role of peer culture, adult expectations, school practices and enduring social structures in shaping processes of identity formation in students and how these processes influence school engagement and achievement. We will consider how these processes unfold at all levels of schooling, from preschool through college, and for students who navigate a range of social identities, from marginalized to privileged.

Instructor: Anjali Adukia
Term: Winter
Fridays 9:30am-10:50am

This course covers policy issues related to education in developing contexts. We will analyze education policies and reforms, develop skills to be a critical consumer of relevant research on each topic, and examine implications of the findings to policy and practice. Topics include discrimination and inclusion in education, understanding factors that influence educational decisions, provision of basic needs in schools, teacher pay and incentives, education in emergency settings, and school choice.

Instructor: Shweder
Term: Winter
Tuesday, Thursday 9:30-10:50

There is a substantial portion of the psychological nature of human beings that is neither homogeneous nor fixed across time and space. At the heart of the discipline of cultural psychology is the tenet of psychological pluralism, which states that the study of “normal” psychology is the study of multiple psychologies and not just the study of a single or uniform fundamental psychology for all peoples of the world. Research findings in cultural psychology thus raise provocative questions about the integrity and value of alternative forms of subjectivity across cultural groups. In this course we analyze the concept of “culture” and examine ethnic and cross-cultural variations in mental functioning with special attention to the cultural psychology of emotions, self, moral judgment, categorization, and reasoning.

Instructor: E. Vogel, E. Awh
Term: Winter

This course will provide a broad overview of current work in psychology and neuroscience related to attention and working memory. We will discuss evidence for sharp capacity limits in an individual’s ability to actively monitor and maintain information in an “online” mental state. Readings will be primarily based on original source articles from peer-reviewed journals, with a focus on behavioral and neural approaches for measuring and understanding these basic cognitive processes.

Please note: This course is a requirement for NCSI majors and spots may be limited.

Instructor: M. Berman

Term: Spring

Viewing the brain globally as an information processing or computational system has revolutionized the study and understanding of intelligence. This course introduces the theory, methods, and empirical results that underlie this approach to psychology. Topics include categorization, attention, memory, knowledge, language, and thought.

Instructor: M. Fulcher
Term: Spring

Monday/Wednesday 9:30am-10:20am

This is an introductory course in developmental psychology, with a focus on cognitive and social development in infancy through early childhood. Example topics include children’s early thinking about number, morality, and social relationships, as well as how early environments inform children’s social and cognitive development. Where appropriate, we make links to both philosophical inquiries into the nature of the human mind, and to practical inquiries concerning education and public policy.

Instructor: Nate Peitrini 

Mondays 5:30PM-8:20PM 

Course Info: This class explores contemporary approaches to K-12 teaching and learning, looking at different perspectives on what students should learn and how teachers should teach. The class will put these approaches in conversation with one another, exploring areas of agreement and conflict. Students will learn to observe and analyze classroom instruction and experience the challenge of planning lessons aligned to one of the approaches. For students interested in K-12 education, this class will provide a helpful survey of some of the current debates around teaching and learning in public education 

Instructor: Lisa Rosen 

Tuesdays 2:00PM-4:50PM 

Course Info: Passionate conflicts over school curriculum and educational policy are a recurring phenomenon in the history of US schooling. Why are schools such frequent sites of struggle and what is at stake in these conflicts? In this discussion-based seminar, we will consider schools as battlegrounds in the US “culture wars”: contests over competing visions of national identity, morality, social order, the fundamental purposes of public education, and the role of the state vis-à-vis the family. Drawing on case studies from history, anthropology, sociology and critical race and gender studies, we will examine both past and contemporary debates over school curriculum and school policy. Topics may include clashes over: the teaching of evolution, sex and sexuality education, busing/desegregation, prayer in schools, multiculturalism, the content of the literary canon, the teaching of reading, mathematics and history, and the closure of “underperforming” urban schools. Our inquiry will examine how social and political movements have used schools to advance or resist particular agendas and social projects

Instructor: Adam Parrot-Sheffer 

Thursdays 12:30-3:20PM 

Course Info: The U.S. preK-12 education landscape is covered in the vestiges of failed or only partially fulfilled efforts to improve our schools. Yet our public schools now educate more people, for more time, in content areas beyond the “3 R’s”, and with better results than at any time in our history as a nation. This course gives students an opportunity to critically examine several promising school-level improvement strategies within the context of larger reform efforts.  Students will consider the role that values, beliefs about learning and people, and local context play in the success of school improvement efforts. Additionally, students will consider the factors that are necessary for sustaining the implementation of school improvement strategies. Ultimately, students will leave the course with a deeper understanding of what they believe the purpose of school is, how people and organizations learn and change, and strategies for influencing change in their own careers, regardless of sector.  The course includes one field experience for students to consider the impact of reforms on preK-12 education institutions. 

Instructor: DuJuan Smith 

Tuesdays 6:30-9:30PM 

Course Info: This course explores the complex history of American urban education from the 19th century to modern times. Our primary analytical lens will be the role of place, race, and ethnicity in the making of contemporary schools, schooling, and curriculum in US urban centers. We will undertake this exploration by examining a selection of books, some of which are “foundational” texts in the history of American urban education, others that have opened new and important areas of research in the field, and still others that have addressed vital issues in the history of urban education in a particularly compelling way. 

Instructor: Hong Jin Jo 

Monday/Wednesday 3:00-4:20 PM 

Course Info: This course offers an in-depth introduction to the sociological study of higher education in both the United States and globally. It explores the evolving significance of college education for students and families, while analyzing how national and international social structures influence students’ educational trajectories. Key topics include college access, campus experiences, academic achievement, and post-graduation outcomes. Through these lenses, students will engage with critical questions about the role and impact of higher education in contemporary society. 

Instructor: Marshall Jean
Term: Spring
Tuesday/Thursday 3:30pm-4:50pm

This course is designed to provide intermediate-level training in research methods that would pick up immediately after traditionally introductory-level classes that end with multiple regression. This course is designed to be a standalone package of training that will provide tools of immediate use in students’ own research or to make them more capable RAs in larger projects. I expect the course will provide the most utility to advanced BA and MA students that will not have time to complete many advanced, specialized courses. However, it would also serve as a useful bridge to more advanced statistical coursework. Students will also learn how to present findings in competent and accessible ways suitable for poster or conference presentations.

Instructor: Casillas
Term: Spring
Tuesday, Thursday 9:30-10:50

Language may be learned by individuals, but we most often use it for communication between groups. How is it that we manage to transmit our internal thoughts to others’ minds? How is it that we can understand what others mean to express to us? Whether we are greeting a passerby, ordering a meal, or debating politics, there are a number of invisible processes that bring language to life in the space between individuals. This course investigates the social and cognitive processes that enable us to successfully communicate with others. The theories we cover are built on observations of adult language use and child development in multiple cultural settings, taking inspiration also from non-human animal communication.

It is expected that, by the end of the course, students will be able to explain the limitations of language for communication and will be able to elaborate on a number of social and other cognitive processes that critically support communicative language use.

Instructor: Raikhel
Term: Spring
Mondays 9:30am-12:20pm

This course draws on a range of perspectives from across the interpretive, critical, and humanistic social sciences to examine the issues of mental health, illness, and distress in higher education.

Instructor: A. Bakkour
Term: Spring

Tuesdays 11:00am-12:20pm

This course examines basic questions in learning and memory. We discuss the historical separation and division of these two areas as well as the paradigmatic differences in studying learning and memory. We also discuss basic research methods for investigating learning and memory and survey established and recent research findings, as well as consider several different kinds of models and theories of learning and memory. Topics include skill acquisition, perceptual learning, statistical learning, working memory, implicit memory, semantic vs. episodic memory, and memory disorders.

Instructor: Carlos Angeles
Term: Spring

Wednesdays 9:30am-12:20pm

The course begins with an introduction to the history, development, and basic tenets of cultural studies. Throughout our work together, we will examine how social class, race/ethnicity, and gender are represented in literacy, language, and cultural theories and research that examine reproduction and resistance. Using cultural studies as the point of departure, this course explores the intersection of culture, power, and language (both oral and written) within schools and school systems. In accordance with the tenets of cultural studies, the course is guided by the presumption that culture (as it is realized through the functioning of schools and their agents and the experiences, knowledge, expressions, dispositions, and meaning-making of people of color, women, and low-income or working-class individuals) is critical for understanding and intervening in the reproduction of social and economic inequality. In order to understand the reproduction of inequality we will examine theories and empirical investigations that explore how structures of domination and subordination are reproduced and social difference and inequality are reinscribed through the cultural practices that are reflected in schools. We will also analyze the extent to which the cultural practices and experiences of marginalized individuals simultaneously contribute to the process of reproduction and also affirm the emancipatory possibilities of resistance.

Instructor: Yanyan Sheng
Term: Spring

Tu/Th 11:00am-12:20pm

Instructor: O’Doherty

Term: Spring

T/Th at 12:30-1:50pm

This course will examine the interactions between media and humans from both a developmental and socio-cultural psychological perspective. Topics will include young children’s learning from media; adolescent’s media use and outcomes such as aggression, mental wellbeing and body image; internet “addiction”; “fake news” and using media for good. Additionally, students will engage in their own research study on a topic of their choosing related to media and psychology as the major project in this course.”

Instructor: Karlyn Gorski

Term: Spring

Thursday 12:30-3:20PM

This one-quarter practicum in qualitative methods aims to develop interview research skills, including instrument design, questioning, transcription, thematic analysis, and write-up, in the context of a mini-BA thesis trial run. The topic of this version of the practicum is public education. Students will engage in interviews with informants in different roles in education, potentially including teachers, administrators, policymakers, and education researchers. Meant to prepare Public Policy Studies students for the BA thesis process, each student, using interviews conducted by themselves and their classmates, will formulate a question related to public education and construct the component parts of their own research paper, which they will submit at the end of the quarter. Course Notes: Open only to Public Policy Studies majors. Can fulfill either the “Methods” or “Windows” major requirement. Recommended for third-year students.