Educational Leadership and Policy (ELP)

The one credit UB Seminar is focused on a big idea or challenging issue to engage students with questions of significance in a field of study and, ultimately, to connect their studies with issues of consequence in the wider world. Essential to the UB Curriculum, the Seminar helps transition to UB through an early connection to UB faculty and the undergraduate experience at a comprehensive, research university. This course is equivalent to any 198 offered in any subject. This course is a controlled enrollment (impacted) course. Students who have previously attempted the course and received a grade of F or R may not be able to repeat the course during the fall or spring semester.

The three credit UB Seminar is focused on a big idea or challenging issue to engage students with questions of significance in a field of study and, ultimately, to connect their studies with issues of consequence in the wider world. Essential to the UB Curriculum, the Seminar helps students with common learning outcomes focused on fundamental expectations for critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and oral communication, and learning at a university, all within topic focused subject matter. The Seminars provide students with an early connection to UB faculty and the undergraduate experience at a comprehensive, research university. This course is equivalent to any 199 offered in any subject. This course is a controlled enrollment (impacted) course. Students who have previously attempted the course and received a grade of F or R may not be able to repeat the course during the fall or spring semester.

Complex twenty-first century issues facing students, parents, local communities, and school personnel underscore the importance of knowledge about educational equity and justice. Thoughtfully developed leadership and policy skills are integral to this knowledge base. This course is designed to introduce undergraduate students to what leading educational scholars who work across the leadership-policy spectrum have to say about ethical and socially just-oriented educational practice. Students will work individually and collaboratively to research how diversity issues intersect with leadership practice and respective policy. They also will explore the ways their positionality and views of leadership matter to fostering positive work climates, and in this case, school milieus. Course activities, discussions, presentations, and written assignments are designed to provide students with opportunities to develop critical, meaningful, and relevant sense-making about leadership for social justice in a way that also empowers them to consider how they can become advocates on specific issues. Course readings will draw primarily from educational research, but also will direct students to relevant interdisciplinary resources from the social sciences.

Teach for America began as an undergraduate thesis and now serves tens of thousands of students around the country. This course gives students the opportunity to make a similar impact. Students will examine how social change happens, not just in textbooks, but in the real world. They should emerge with a deeper understanding of efforts to effect social change and new ideas for how to do so more effectively in the future. Course content will focus on poverty and social policy and will be enriched by multiple visits to local non-profit agencies.

This course will offer a sociological overview of American schools and schooling, and their connection to broader social structures, institutions, and practices. With a particular focus on social inequality in education, we will discuss central themes, issues, and controversies in American education, including the nature and purpose of schooling, multicultural education, social and cultural capital in education, school reform, tracking, immigrant education, and the ways in which class, race/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality intersect in students¿ divergent learning experiences and outcomes. While we are all familiar with schools, it is hoped that this course will help students better understand the sociological forces behind the shaping of the American educational system and the purposes, processes, consequences, and controversies of schooling that are often obscure in the day-to-day lives of students, teachers, administrators, parents, and the public.

ELP 406 covers basic topics in international and comparative education including: how education systems throughout the world are being influenced by globalization; how education systems differ throughout the world; how students from different cultures interact with different education systems. This course stresses the importance of using a comparative lens to understand education. ELP 405 is a useful baseline course but is not required as a prerequisite.

This course explores the complex relationship among diversity, (in)equity, and educational contexts by focusing on the conceptual categories including language, race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, class, age, ability, sexual orientation, and religion. Students will also be introduced to the diverse ways in which these categories intersect in people's lives including identity development and academic achievement and in which people use language, in particular, to communicate with and influence one another in the dynamic, social context of education. Among the topics covered are understanding diversity, creating an inclusive educational culture, developing culturally responsive/relevant curricula, materials, and practices, and educating and leading towards individual growth and global social justice and prosperity. Students will gain a deeper understanding of languages and cultures with their powerful relevance to and impact on education and beyond through asynchronous online discussions on scholarly literature and popular cultural films, discussion leads, and research projects.

A person seeking to develop a better understanding of the United States could probably find no better place to begin than to study American education. Schools in the U.S. both shape and are shaped by the communities they serve, and by American society at-large. Public schools in particular provide the foundation for America's democracy and are perceived by many to be the gateway to the "American Dream." This course is intended to help American and international students, both graduate and undergraduate, develop a better understanding of America's education system through readings, group discussions and projects, and visits to area schools. In this course, students will examine American education's philosophical underpinnings, as well as its policy-making and governance structures. Graduate students will then be asked to compare and contrast these policies and practices with those in their home countries or, if American students, with policies and practices in other countries. Topics to be covered include: the history and goals of public education; the profession of teaching; equality of educational opportunity; multicultural and multilingual education; local control, choice, home schooling and charter schools, power and control at the state and national levels; textbooks, curriculum and instruction, e-learning and cyber bullying; and the courts and the schools. There are no course prerequisites and both American and international students may register.

Independent study course that will be discussed between instructor and student.