Adult Learning Theory and Practice  
DCI 791
Fall 2008

Instructor: Jennifer Sandlin
Credit hours: 3
Days: Wednesday,
Time: 4:40pm to 7:30pm
Location: Harrington Room 602
Contact: Jennifer.Sandlin@asu.edu

Course Description:
This course explores the multiple dimensions of learning in adulthood, including the social contexts of learning, and cognitive and developmental aspects of learning. It focuses on the experience and practice of adult learning, and examines the various theories attempting to explain how adults learn. This course is relevant to anyone who currently works with adult learners or who hopes to do so in the future; it is for educators who work with adults in a variety of settings, including professional development settings, community organizations, higher education, adult literacy programs, informal learning settings, human resource development, continuing 
education, etc.

Readings
There are two required textbooks for this class: 

Merriam, S. B., Caffarella, R. S., & Baumgartner, L. M. (2007). Learning in adulthood: A comprehensive guide (Third ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Brookfield, S. D. (2005). The power of critical theory: Liberating adult learning and teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Topics we will cover in this course include:
* Contexts of and participation in adult learning
* Physical, psychological and socio-cultural development
* Cognitive development, intelligence, and aging
* The learning process and the brain
* Andragogy and self-directed learning
* Transformational learning
* Critical theory and adult learning
* Feminist perspectives on adult learning
* Informal learning
* Learning through popular culture and public pedagogy
* Embodied and spiritual learning
* Situated cognition and other context-based approaches
* Narrative learning
* Social movement learning

Critical Social Theory and Education 
 
Fall 2008

Instructor: Donald Blumenfeld-Jones
Credit hours: 3
Contact: dbj@asu.edu or 480-965-0999

Course Description:
Critical Social Theory and Education is a doctoral/advanced masters student seminar exploring education through the lens of critical social theory (Marx, Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Habermas).  We begin by establishing basic understandings of Marx's theory of alienation, base and superstructure, hegemony (Raymond William's vision), and culture theory as well as a vision of human consciousness through Pierre Bourdieu's theory of habitus, social or cultural capital, and field.  After this we study various critical education scholars (such as Freire, Giroux, McClaren, Purpel, Weiler, hooks) as they relate to these ideas.  Each student will be responsible for using these ideas to analyze an area of their own interest (not restricted to educational settings).

Cultural Studies in Education 
DCI 691
Fall 2008

Instructor: Jennifer Sandlin
Credit hours: 3
Days: Monday,
Time: 4:40 - 7:30 PM
Location: Tempe Campus, Farmer (ED) 108B
Contact: Jennifer.Sandlin@asu.edu

Course Description:
Since its formal inception in the 1960s, cultural studies has produced provocative and controversial approaches to understanding the intersections of identity, social justice, and cultural phenomena. Cultural studies incorporates perspectives and research from a variety of disciplinary sources, including media studies, feminism, queer theory, post-structuralism, and post-colonialism, into the study of popular culture, art and other cultural artifacts, and cultural phenomenon in the broadest sense. In this course, we approach the broad field of cultural studies and its influence on sociological research and thought by linking historical/theoretical perspectives to contemporary cultural studies research and students' applied projects. Course content will cover a range of key cultural studies literature, including classical readings from Birmingham School and early American cultural studies scholars, as well as contemporary writings that integrate approaches to cultural inquiry. Although this course is offered by the Mary Lou Fulton College of Education, the radically trans-disciplinary nature of cultural studies theory and research is applicable to graduate studies across a variety of academic fields, including the social sciences, arts, and humanities. Accordingly, graduate students from any discipline are welcome to enroll.

Equity Seminar: Developing Your Dissertation Proposal 
DCI/SPF 691
Fall 2008

Instructor: Gustavo Fischman and Jeanne M. Powers
Class number: DCI 691 #86086/SPF 691 #86099
Credit hours: 3
Days: Monday,
Time: 4:40pm to 7:30pm
Location: West Hall 160
Contact: fischman@asu.edu or jeanne.powers@asu.edu

Course Description:
This course is for graduate students who plan to conduct research on educational equity from the vantage point of the social sciences and humanities.  Ideally, students who participate in the course are completing their coursework and/or in the early stages of planning their masters or dissertation research.

Students will produce a "pre-proposal" modeled after the Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship application (for more information, see http://www.spencer.org/programs/fellows/dissertation.htm ).  All the activities in this class are structured to help students move from a broadly conceived research topic to the pre-proposal in which students will start outlining and refining the theoretical and methodological approaches that will drive their research projects.  Over the course of the semester we will discuss theoretical issues related to the topic of equity as well as research design.  Students will also have a number of hands-on writing opportunities.

This course is meant to help students jump-start their research projects.  This stage of the research process is often very challenging and sometimes frustrating.  The goal of the course is to provide students with a substantial amount of support and feedback they approach these tasks.

Institutional Research and Evaluation 
HED 691
Fall 2008

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

Course Description:
Higher education professionals including administrators, faculty,
and researchers are expected to develop an appreciation and
understanding for the role of research, analysis, and evaluation.
Institutional research and evaluation are important functions in
efforts to advance colleges and universities. These functions help
maintain effectiveness by providing vital data and analysis for
planning, decision-making and policy development within
educational organizations.

Institutional Research and Evaluation in Higher Education is a
graduate level course designed to offer an articulated understanding
of contextual and practical application and uses of institutional
research and evaluation in higher education institutions. Students
will develop and execute techniques and skills that are critical to
conducting institutional research and evaluation.

Topics and activities will include:
* Systems Thinking in Higher Education
* Understanding Large-Scale National/Federal Databases (such
      as IPEDS, NCES, etc.)
* University-wide Institutional Data Systems
* Data Analysis and Development of Policy Briefs on Current
     Issues in Higher Education (such as Diversity and Retention)
* College and University Rankings (such as U.S. News and
     World Report Rankings)

Postmodern Approaches to Qualitative Inquiry: Applying Bakhtin and Bourdieu 
 
Fall 2008

Instructor: Donald Blumenfeld-Jones
Credit hours: 3
Days: Wednesday,
Time: 4:40 PM to 7:30 PM
Contact: dbj@asu.edu or 480-965-0999

Course Description:
"Postmodern Approaches . . ." is an applied inquiry course in which we will explore the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin and Pierre Bourdieu and use them to study the gathering and analysis of data.

Bakhtin: We will be taking an aesthetic approach to data analysis, focusing closely on the exact language used as keys to understanding the play of power within discourse settings.  We will be concerned with metaphor, metonymy, proto-stories, stories, and multiple language communities found within one discourse setting.  These linguistic attributes will be studied through the lens of Bakhtin's notions of heteroglossia, chronotope, and the intersection of multiple languages within one site, as he developed them in his study of the novel.

Bourdieu: Bourdieu's two significant notions of habitus and field will be central to our explorations of data and how to gather data that will facilitate our understanding of the play of abitus and field in a research setting.

Students will be expected to either bring an existing data set with them (interview transcripts, ield notes, and the like) or gather some data.  In addition the I will provide some of my data from a Navajo curriculum project.

Transnational Literacies 
RDG 691/791
Fall 2008

Instructor: Doris Warriner
Credit hours: 3
Days: Wednesday,
Time: 4:40 - 7:30 pm
Location: West Hall 267
Contact: Doris.Warriner@asu.edu

Course Description:
In recent years, literacy studies scholars have been urged to provide ethnographies of literacy that describe the situated nature of literacy ;practices while also illuminating how locally situated literacy practices are connected to larger sociohistorical influences, political processes, ideological questions, and material consequences. At the same time, the anthropological and sociological study of transnationalism has started to shift from mostly theoretical accounts of global flows to an interest in "how everyday practices of ordinary people produce cultural meanings that sustain transnational networks and make possible enduring translocal ties" (Smith 2003, p. 468). This seminar unites such areas of inquiry to investigate the "human face of global mobility"(Favell et al. 2006) through the empirical examination of transnational literacy practices. With a focus on the locally situated but globally influenced ways that individual experiences and identities are represented, enacted and transformed by specific actors living in the realm of everyday practice, the systematic examination of the situated and contested dialectic between everyday practices and transnational processes reflects a growing interest across disciplinary boundaries with "the condition of cultural interconnectedness and mobility across space" (Ong 1999). As such, the course has implications for education, applied linguistics, language policy and planning, and geography.

Required books:

• Alim, H. Samy and Alastair Pennycook. 2007. Glocal linguistic flows: Hip-hop culture(s), identities, and the politics of language education. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education,6(2): 89-100.
• Pennycook, Alastair. 2007. Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows. New York: Routledge.

Whiteness & Racism 
DCI 791
Fall 2008

Instructor: Dan Battey
Credit hours: 3
Days: Wednesday,
Time: 4:40 - 7:30 pm
Location: Tempe Campus
Contact: Daniel.Battey@asu.edu

Course Description:
DCI 791 is a course that examines the political, economic and cultural construction of whiteness primarily in the U.S. How has 'whiteness' been defined in relation to discourses of color and race? How is whiteness understood from non-white perspectives? How have notions of whiteness changed over time? What are the socio-cultural consequences of "white supremacy" as a hegemonic ideology? In addition to situating the construction of whiteness as an ethnic identity and social status, We will examine collective and individual notions of this identification, as it is co-constructed with notions of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality and nation. By looking at how white identities are reproduced, maintained and challenged in social relations, pop culture, the media and current affairs, this course is aimed at examining how the idea of whiteness has come to be imbedded within cultural and material politics over time and space.

NEW COURSES

• Adult Learning Theory and Practice 
• Critical Social Theory and Education
• Cultural Studies in Education
• Equity Seminar: Developing Your Dissertation Proposal
• Institutional Research and Evaluation
• Postmodern Approaches to Qualitative Inquiry: Applying Bakhtin and Bourdieu
• Transnational Literacies
• Whiteness & Racism