EDG 6931: Critical Issues in Middle Level Education
Dr. Colleen Swain
Mondays, 5:10pm-8:10pm
Songs, television shows, and books have been written about the difficult position of being “in the middle.” In a similar manner, the mere thought of middle school produces a wide array of reactions in adults. Yet, this is a critical stage in the developmental and academic life of young adolescents. The importance of this stage in a young adolescent’s educational career is reaffirmed by research that provides evidence that a student’s success in middle school is a strong predictor of finishing high school. Clearly the stakes are high! However, middle level education is not just about the student’s academic success—it is more encompassing and much more complex. Come join us in this graduate level seminar where we will explore many aspects of middle level education. Students will gain significant foundational knowledge about middle level education but also have the flexibility to delve deeply into an aspect of middle level education that is of most interest to them. Feel free to contact Dr. Colleen Swain (cswain@coe.ufl.edu) if you have questions about this course. We hope you will join our community of educators interested in and concerned about middle level education.

MAE 7899: Mathematics Education Seminar: Using Research Funding to Address Issues in Education
Dr. Tim Jacobbe
Mondays, 5:10pm-8:10pm
Recent examples from COE faculty will serve as the curriculum for illustrating the central concepts for addressing educational issues with externally funded research. The process will involve articulating contemporary issues as researchable problems, designing a multi-year program of research, and preparing an appropriate budget. Learning from examples will involve reviewing funding sources, current calls for proposals and deconstructing successful proposals. Statistics Education will serve as one of the major examples in the course; however examples from faculty in STEM Education and other disciplines focused on contemporary issues of teaching and learning will also be presented.

EDG 6931: Literacy, Culture, & Politics
Dr. Danling Fu
Mondays, 5:10pm-8:10pm
In this course, we will read and discuss with a historical view about how literacy is lived in American society and reach an understanding of how rapid economic restructuring affects the ways that individuals acquire reading and writing; how families pass skills of literacy on to children under conditions of relentless social and technological change. Through critical reading and discussion, students are invited to investigate: what is the role of economic change in maintaining inequality in access to and reward for literacy? “As democratic institutions, schools are supposed to exist to offset imbalances that market philosophy helps to create – including, especially, imbalances in the worth of people’s literacy” (Brandt, 205). Through reading multiple case studies of literacy in the lives of working class people, individuals/children in poverty and of ethnic minority backgrounds, we will examine how the schools in America often fail this obligation by organizing literacy to serve the needs of the economic system, betraying their democratic possibilities. We’ll also examine how teachers’ views, bias and attitude toward students and their backgrounds affect their students’ school learning and achievement. In the 21st century, literacy is featured as multiliteracies and multimedia. This seminar will guide students to investigate children’s responses to media, and how they make sense of media representations of race, sex, violence, and class. As a graduate seminar, we will pay special attention to research methodology and theoretic framework pertaining to the research studied in this course.

LAE 7936: Seminar in English Language Arts: New Literacies, Teaching, and Learning
Dr. Barbara Pace
Tuesdays, 4:05pm-7:05pm
In this doctoral seminar we will examine digital literacies by investigating what they are and the promise and challenge they offer educators. We will consider literacy practices and the nature of literacy events that can be designed to promote learning and disciplinary epistemologies across contexts. We will investigate the role of digital literacies in teacher education and in the future study of literacy, teaching, and learning. This seminar is a blended class that will meet both face-to-face and in online forums related to digital literacy, media literacy, and teaching. We will not meet F2F each week. Texts will include Language and Learning in a Digital Age (Gee & Hayes, 2011), The Future of Literacy Studies (Baynham & Prinsloo, 2009), and selected articles on theory and research that consider the points at which digital literacies, teaching, and learning intersect.

EDF 6544: Philosophical Foundations of Education
Dr. Sevan Terzian
Tuesdays, 4:05pm-7:05pm
This course examines the philosophical foundations of education. We will investigate a series of inter-related questions. What is the ultimate purpose of education? How can we best characterize human nature? How do people learn? What constitutes knowledge? What methods should educators employ to realize their goals? There are no definitive answers to these questions. But the practice of asking them and considering their implications through various forms of philosophical analysis will help us to examine our own assumptions of what education means and what it ought to be.

EME 6606: Advanced Instructional Design
Dr. Albert Ritzhaupt
Wednesdays, 5:10pm-8:10pm
This course focuses on the student who is becoming an instructional design (ID) professional by refining and adding to the skills learned in the beginning Instructional Design course, building on the foundational knowledge about the practice of ID, and encouraging the development of communication skills. Self-directed teams analyze an instructional need for a client, design and develop instruction to meet the need, and evaluate and revise the instruction. Designed for instructors and administrators as well as trainers and instructional designers from a range of professional and educational settings, the course engages students in authentic design activities. As with an apprenticeship approach, it is acknowledged that each member of the team has skills and knowledge from which others can benefit. ID apprentices benefit by co-analyzing instructional design problems, having access to a wide range of ideas and perspectives, working with diverse teams and individuals, creating real instructional design products or cases, and giving and receiving constructive feedback.

RED 6346: Seminar in Reading
Dr. Zhihui Fang
Wednesdays, 1:55pm-4:55pm
This seminar is for advanced graduate students who are interested in using evidence-based language and literacy practices to support learning and inquiry in academic content areas. As the knowledge that students have to learn becomes more specialized and complex, the language that constructs such knowledge also becomes more technical, dense and abstract, patterning in ways that enable content experts to engage in specialized social, semiotic and cognitive practices. In order to effectively engage with the texts of disciplinary learning, students need to develop new reading and writing skills that are more embedded in each subject, beyond those they have learned in the primary grades. This course illuminates some of the ways language is used in the academic subjects of science, history, mathematics and language arts, and offers strategies for helping students comprehend, compose and critique the advanced texts of schooling.

EDG 6931: ESOL Issues: Family-School-Community Partnerships for ELLs
Dr. Maria Coady
Thursdays, 1:55pm-4:55pm
Student development is largely influenced by three overlapping spheres: families, schools, and communities. This is true for all children, but especially for those from non-traditional backgrounds and those homes in which English is not the main language of communication. This doctoral-level seminar explores ESOL/immigrant students’ educational experiences and outcomes by investigating family-school-communities partnerships and the increasingly important role that those partnerships play in the current socio-economic and political environment to ensure student success. In this seminar, we will read empirical research, theoretical pieces, and spent some time in school-community settings to explore the ways in which partnerships with ESOL/immigrant families can be most effectively implemented.

EDG 6931: Survey of Research Methods in STEM Education
Dr. Kent Crippen
Thursdays, 6:15pm-9:10pm
Focusing on mixed method design and design-based research, this advanced course is intended to develop an understanding of the research methods used in STEM education. Using current research from across the disciplines of STEM education and the Learning Sciences, students will explore the relationships among the complex, multidisciplinary nature of STEM, contemporary theoretical perspectives, and the methods of research to address compelling questions related to curriculum, instruction, and student learning.

EDG 6931: Multiple Perspectives on Teaching & Learning
Dr. Stephen Pape
Thursdays, 5:10pm-8:10pm
This course will survey theoretical perspectives on teaching and learning including cognitive, social constructivist, sociocultural, social cognitive, and situative perspectives. Students will gain an understanding of these different perspectives as they pertain to instructional models and research.

EDG 7252: Curriculum, Teaching, & Teacher Education
Dr. Colleen Swain
Thursdays, 5:10pm-8:10pm
This course will involve a collaborative exploration of enduring issues related to curriculum, teaching and teacher education. We will focus on historical and current controversies in the curriculum field beginning with readings that review the historical and philosophical foundations of the field and then use these foundations as a lens for examining current issues.

LAE 7006: Language Acquisition Education
Dr. Jane Townsend
Thursdays, 5:10pm-8:10pm
This is a doctoral-level seminar that examines processes of human learning, addresses the natural sense-making and native speaker abilities of children and adolescents, and takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding what linguistic and cultural diversity can tell us about how to support all students’ achievement in school. Whatever your academic area and level of interest– social studies, science, mathematics, early childhood, elementary or secondary– understanding the socio-cultural contexts of language development can raise important questions about curriculum development and instruction. We will explore critical and creative literacy across subject areas, and each student will design and undertake an in-the-field research project shaped to individual interests.