Consumption and education: Towards a critical pedagogy of consumption 
DCI 691
Spring 2010

Instructor: Jennifer Sandlin
Credit hours: 3
Days: Monday,
Time: 4:40-7:30 PM
Contact: Jennifer.Sandlin@asu.edu

Course Description:
This discussion-based course will focus on the connections between consumption, education, and learning. The course has four major sections. (1) First, we will focus on Education, Consumption, and the Social, Economic, and Environmental Crises of Capitalism, and will explore different theoretical perspectives on consumption and consumerism, drawing mainly from the fields of sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies. We will also explore the present context of consumer capitalism and the various implications our current times hold for lifelong education and learning. (2) Second, we will focus on Schooling the Consumer Citizen, where we will explore the commercialization of formal schooling institutions (from K-12 through higher and adult education) and examine how individuals are schooled to be consumers in these contexts. (3) Third, we will focus on Consumption, Popular Culture, Everyday Life, and the Education of Desire, where we will examine sites of public pedagogy outside of schools where individuals are socialized as consumers, including spaces such as Disneyworld, McDonald’s, shopping malls, popular culture, grocery stores, etc. (4) Finally, we will address Unlearning Consumerism through Critical Pedagogies of Consumption: Sites of Contestation and Resistance. In this last section of the course we will examine both formal and informal sites of education and learning where teachers and learners are enacting critical pedagogies of consumption.

Perspectives on curriculum 
 
Spring 2010

Instructor: Thomas Barone
Credit hours: 3
Days: Thursday,
Time: 4:40-7:30pm
Contact: Tom Barone

Course Description:

Nowadays we often assume that we know what schools, colleges, and universities ought to be teaching. This course is designed to encourageeducators to think more deeply about what those skills, subject matters, habits of mind, etc., should be.
  
This course focuses on long-standing questions central to the curriculum field, addressed by scholars and educators throughout the ages. These questions include the following: What is an educated person? What should be taught in schools? Why should it be taught? To whom should it be taught? What should be the outcomes of educational programs and proposals in terms of what students feel, know, and can do?

These questions and others will be addressed from a variety of perspectives. These perspectives include, but are not limited to, the following: the Western traditionalist perspective, the academic rationalist perspective, multiculturalist perspectives, structuralist perspectives, the perspective of curriculum as a set of cognitive processes, various critical theory perspectives, feminist perspectives, non-Western perspectives, and postmodernist perspectives. Students will be encouraged to confront these perspectives in terms of their own professional knowledge, experiences, and aspirations.

Please contact Dr. Tom Barone at barone@asu.edu for more information.

Radical unschooling and homeschooling 
DCI/APL 691
Spring 2010

Instructor: Kellie Rolstad
Class number: DCI 691, section 1004, line number 20853
APL 691, section 1005, line number 26417
Credit hours: 3
Days: Thursday,
Time: 3:05-4:30pm
Contact: Kellie.Rolstad@asu.edu

Course Description:
In resistance to institutionalized education, families are increasingly choosing homeschooling and other alternatives to mainstream educational options for their children. Among homeschoolers, approaches range widely from "doing school at home" to radical unschooling, defined as curriculum-free, standards-free, assessment-free, and entirely child-controlled learning. As part of a more general critique of schooling, we will consider the effects of schooling on language development, and on academic language in particular. Cross-listed in Curriculum Studies and in Applied Linguistics, this seminar explores the growing diversity in the homeschooling and unschooling movements by focusing on how families strive for an authentic education in an era of accountability. In addition, we consider learning principles as revealed by how children learn without school and without instruction, and how those learning principles can guide educators in improving children’s lives and learning in or out of school.

In our reading, we will draw from such books as John Holt's classic How Children Fail, Frank Smith's Book of Learning and Forgetting, Grace Llewellyn's Teenage Liberation Handbook, Seymour Papert’s The Children’s Machine, and Milton Gaither's Homeschooling: An American History, among others.

This course is hybrid, with face-to-face meetings on Thursdays, 3:05-4:30pm. Students are required to have internet access to complete the online component of the class. The course is cross-listed as DCI 691, section 1004 and line number 20853 and APL 691, section 1005 and line number 26417.

Social justice, technology and education 
SPF 691
Spring 2010

Instructor: Kimberly Scott
Class number: 90584
Credit hours: 3
Time: Hybrid Meeting dates: January 4-7 & 11-14, 2010 4:40-9:40PM
Contact: kimbescott@gmail.com

Course Description:
Despite the commonly held belief that there is no longer a digital divide, an intersectional approach suggests otherwise. In this Winter Session course, we will assume a critical theoretical lens to explore the new technological gap, who it involves, how culturally relevant computing approaches can address the multiple issues shaping the technological gap, and engage in hands-on experiences of digital media that encourages greater understanding of social justice, equity, and access related to information technology. Through small group discussions in both real and virtual spaces, game playing, readings, and interactive lectures, the course draws on various media for analysis. How technology can serve as a means towards a social justice end for advancing African American, Native American, Hispanic American, and low-income populations will center this 3-semester-hour graduate level class. This course is designed for graduate students from across the campus including but not limited to those studying education, sociology, technology, social justice, and diversity studies.

NEW COURSES

• Consumption and education: Towards a critical pedagogy of consumption
• Perspectives on curriculum
• Radical unschooling and homeschooling
• Social justice, technology and education