EDUC 260/SOC 261:  SOCIAL DIVERSITY & INEQUALITY IN EDUCATION

 

Professor:  Hilton Kelly, Ph.D. 

Semester:  Fall 2008

Office:  6 Jackson Court

Class Time:  T Th 2:30-3:45

Voice:  (704) 894-2704

Class Location:  1027 Chambers

E-mail:  hikelly@davidson.edu 

Office Hrs:  M T Th 1-00-2:00 & By Appt.

                                                                                   

                                               

COURSE OVERVIEW

 

This course focuses on issues of social diversity, social inequality, and social justice in education.  It is designed to integrate cognitive development with the experiential aspects of social learning.  Students will be encouraged to link new learning with their personal and social reality through structured writing assignments, cooperative learning activities, and critical experiential pedagogy. 

 

If education is indeed a central site of conflict over the gap between the United States’ egalitarian mission and its unequal structure, processes, and outcomes, then this course will provide students with a “critical” perspective and vision to challenge inequality in schooling and society.  Students will rethink contemporary solutions to social diversity in education, develop a social justice framework which emphasizes inequality, and design an institutional ethnographic project as a critical intervention in schools and society.

 

 

BROAD LEARNING GOALS

 

1.      To develop awareness of social diversity in the United States and the questions it raises about inequality and social justice in educational institutions.

2.      To analyze social relations within educational institutions using ethnography.

3.      To apply methods of critical analysis drawn from anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, and psychology to an examination of social issues in the United States educational system.

4.      To promote critical thinking and lifelong learning about the dynamics of social diversity and inequality in education.

 

 

COURSE METAPHOR

 

“The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.  And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”

 

~R. D. Laing

 

 

REQUIRED TEXTS

 

Adams, Maurianne, Warren J. Blumenfeld, Rosie Castaneda, Heather W. Hackman, Madeline L. Peters, Ximena Zuniga.  (Eds.)  (2000).  Readings for Diversity and Social Justice.  New York:  Routledge.  RDSJ

 

Campbell, Marie L. and Frances Gregor.  (2004).  Mapping Social Relations:  A Primer in Doing Institutional Ethnography.  Walnut Creek, CA:  AltaMira Press.

 

Johnson, Alan.  (2006).  Privilege, Power, and Difference.  2^nd Ed.  New York:  McGraw-Hill.

 

Lui, Meizhu, Barbara Robles, Betsy Leondar-Wright, Rose Brewer, and Rebecca Adamson.  (2006).  The Color of Wealth:  The Story Behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide.  New York:  The New Press.

 

 

READING SCHEDULE

 

Module One:  Social Diversity and Its Discontents

 

August 26       Introduction to Course

 

August 28       The Problem of Social Diversity

 

                        “The Complexity of Identity: ‘Who Am I’” (Tatum) RDSJ 1

                        “Education as a Social Function” (Dewey)

“The Great Civil Rights Movement and the New Culture Wars” (Spring)

                       

September 2  Coming to Consciousness:  Connecting Social Identities to Oppression

 

                        “Cycle of Socialization” (Harro) RDSJ 2

                        “Five Faces of Oppression” (Young) RDSJ 5

                         From “Where We Stand:  Class Matters” (hooks)

                       

September 4   Prejudice and Discrimination

 

“Defining Prejudice” (Sampson)

“Discrimination Comes in Many Forms:  Individual, Institutional, and Structural” (Pincus) RDSJ 4

 “The Continuing Significance of Race:  Antiblack Discrimination in Public Places” (Feagin) RDSJ 10

 

September 9 Everyone Has Privilege

 

“White Privilege, Male Privilege” (McIntosh)

From “Privilege, Power, and Difference” Chapters 1 & 2 (Johnson)

 

September 11 Privilege and the Matrix of Domination

 

                        From “Privilege, Power, and Difference” Chapters 3 &4 (Johnson)

                        “Complexion” (Rodriguez) RDSJ 15

                        “An Asian Lesbian’s Struggle” (Lee) RDSJ 16

 

September 16 Privilege and Oppression

                       

“’Night to His Day’:  The Social Construction of Gender” (Lorber) RDSJ 32

From “Privilege, Power, and Difference” Chapters 5, 6, & 7 (Johnson)

 

September 18            Cultural and Social Reproduction:  Negotiating Identities

 

                        “Playing in the Gender Transgression Zone” (McGuffey and Rich)

“Bad Boys:  Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity” (Ferguson)

 

Module Two:  “Doing IE” in Educational Institutions

 

September 23 The Everyday World as Problematic

 

“The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (Lorde)

“Can White Heterosexual Men Understand Oppression?” (Thompson) RDSJ 91

From “Privilege, Power, and Difference” Chapters 8 & 9 (Johnson)

 

Socialization Paper Due

 

 

 

September 25 Mapping Social Relations

 

Mapping Social Relations: A Primer in Doing Institutional Ethnography Chapters 1 & 2 (Campbell and Gregor)

“Working Class Students Speak Out” (Lewis, Holland, & Kelly) RDSJ 80 

 

September 30 Finding a Problematic

 

Mapping Social Relations: A Primer in Doing Institutional Ethnography Chapter 3 (Campbell and Gregor)

 

Institutional Review Board (IRB) Tutorial Training

                       

October 2        The Practice of Institutional Ethnography (IE)

 

Mapping Social Relations: A Primer in Doing Institutional Ethnography Chapter 4 (Campbell and Gregor) 

“Compulsory Heterosexuality: Schools and Lesbian Students” (Khayatt)

 

IE Site Due and Begin Observation Period

 

October 7       Writing Ethnography

 

 Mapping Social Relations: A Primer in Doing Institutional Ethnography Chapter 5 (Campbell and Gregor)

“’Those Loud Black Girls’: (Black) Women, Silence, and Gender Passing” in the Academy” (Fordham)

 

October 9        Writing Ethnography

                       

“Pursuing Members’ Meanings” (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw)

 “There Is No “Race” in the Schoolyard:  Colorblind Ideology in an (Almost) All-White School.”  (Lewis)

 

October 14      Fall Break

 

October 16      Writing Ethnography

                       

                        “Processing fieldnotes:  Coding and Memoing” (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw)

“Institutional Ethnography: Using Interviews to Investigate Ruling Relations.” (DeVault and McCoy) 

 

 

Module Three:  Reading, Writing, and Seeing Social Inequality

 

October 21     Do you see what I see?

 

“Defining Contested Concepts” (Weber)

“Obscuring the Importance of Race:  The Implication of Making Comparisons between Racism and Sexism (or Other –Isms)” (Grillo and Wildman)

                       

                        IE Fieldnotes Report Due

 

October 23      Cooperative Learning Activity Group Meetings            

 

October 28      American Educational Studies Association Conference (No Class)

 

October 30      American Educational Studies Association Conference (No Class)

 

November 4   The Color of Wealth

 

            “Land Rich, Dirt Poor:  Challenges to Asset Building in Native America”

            IE Fieldnotes Report Due

 

November 6   The Color of Wealth

 

                        “Forged in Blood:  Black Wealth Injustice in the United States”

                        IE Fieldnotes Report Due

 

November 11 The Color of Wealth

 

                        “Neighbors and Fences:  Latinos in the United States”

                        IE Fieldnotes Report Due

 

November 13 The Color of Wealth

 

                        “The Perils of Being Yellow:  Asian Americans as Perpetual Foreigners”

                        IE Fieldnotes Report Due

 

November 18 The Color of Wealth

 

“Climbing the Up Escalator:  White Advantages in Wealth Accumulation”

IE Fieldnotes Report Due

 

November 20 Playing in the Dark:  Hidden, Invisible, and Unseen Social Worlds

 

                        “Rainbow Economics:  Closing the Racial Wealth Divide”

“What Is Taught:  The Hidden Curriculum” (deMarrais and LeCompte)

 

November 25 We Have Only Just Begun:  Social Justice in Education

 

“Toward a New Vision:  Race, Class, and Gender as Categories of Analysis and Connection” (Hill Collins) RDSJ 87

“How to Interrupt Oppressive Behavior” (McClintock) RDSJ 92

 “The Cycle of Liberation” (Harro) RDSJ 88

 

November 27 IE Project:  Preparation and Writing

 

Module Four:  Institutional Ethnography Project

 

December 2    IE Poster Session     

 

December 4    IE Poster Session

 

December 9    IE Poster Session

 

December 15  IE Projects DUE

 

 

GRADING

 

Class Participation (5%)                           Concomitant Assignments (35%) 

Attendance                                                  Commentaries (6)

Cooperative Learning                                 Reading Quizzes

Classroom Civility                                       Cooperative Learning Activity

  

Socialization Paper (10%)                           

                                                                    

Institutional Ethnography (50%)           

Fieldnotes Reports                                      

Poster Presentation

Final Paper

 

 

 

 

LATE PAPERS

 

Unless you have been given prior approval, no writing assignments will be accepted late.

 

COMMENTARIES

 

The purpose of commentaries is to encourage critical and reflective thinking about the readings and to improve communication through written expression.  Commentaries are argumentative papers that draw upon major themes and critical perspectives covered in and across readings. 

 

Students will be expected to make an argument and to consider counter-arguments when appropriate.  Please do not summarize the readings!  At the end of the commentary, students will generate four thought-provoking questions to encourage further thinking about the readings.  

 

Commentaries should be double-spaced, word processed, and consistent with the American Psychological Association (APA) reference format.  There is no maximum length, but the minimum is three complete pages.  Please note that commentaries are due on the dates that appear in a box in the reading schedule (e.g. September 2).  Under no circumstances will students be allowed to e-mail commentaries. 

 

READINGS

 

The readings are an essential component of this course.  They provide additional information and perspectives, aid in broadening your understanding, and prepare you for writing assignments.  You will be able to print articles and book chapters from Blackboard.  You will be expected to complete readings before class.  You are required to take copious notes from the readings.  Reading quizzes will be random and calculated as a concomitant assignment. 

 

INSTITUTIONAL ETHNOGRAPHY:  A BRIEF NOTE

 

Institutional Ethnography (IE) draws from ethnomethodology and focuses on how everyday experience is socially organized.  In this course, we will locate and document the social organization of race/gender/class experiences in educational settings (e.g., K-16 classrooms, after-school programs, on-campus organizations, libraries, and tutoring programs).  The guiding question for an institutional ethnographer is how does this happen? How are these relations organized?  In answering these types of questions, institutional ethnographers rely on the influence of paradigms such as social organization literature, critical theory, and feminist discourse.  Accordingly, social relations are systematic processes and practices that manage and control people’s lives through ruling relations more or less mysteriously and outside a person’s knowledge (Campbell & Gregor, 2002).  Each student will become a participant observer in an educational setting, uncovering ruling relations through institutional ethnography.  Minimum Observation Hours = 35

 

Reference: 

Campbell, M. & F. Gregor.  (2002).  Mapping social relations: A primer in doing institutional ethnography. Toronto, Ontario, Canada:  Garamond Press.

 

 

ATTENDANCE

 

Attendance to all classes is critical.  If you are unable to attend class for any reason, you should provide a written explanation for your absence.  Two points will be deducted from class participation for each “unexcused” absence.  No points will be deducted from class participation for “excused” absences.  I reserve the right to decide whether an absence is unexcused or excused.  (ATTENTION:  Job interviews, doctor appointments, taking a test for another class, leaving early, or coming back late from vacation are not acceptable reasons for missing class.)  Whether unexcused or excused, four absences or more may result in failure.

 

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

 

The students and faculty of Davidson College are committed to the Honor Code and will not tolerate any violation of this principle.  Academic honesty, the cornerstone of teaching and learning, lays the foundation for lifelong integrity.  Academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to, providing or receiving assistance in a manner not authorized by the instructor in the creation of work to be submitted for evaluation.  This standard applies to all work ranging from daily homework assignments to reviews.  Students must clearly cite any sources consulted---not only for quoted phrases but also for ideas and information that are not common knowledge.  Neither ignorance nor carelessness is an acceptable defense in cases of plagiarism.  It is the student's responsibility to follow the appropriate format for citations.  As indicated in Davidson College’s Student Handbook, instructors must refer every act of academic dishonesty and violations may result in failure in the course, suspension, or expulsion.

 

DOCUMENTED DISABILITIES

 

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal anti-discrimination statute that provides comprehensive civil rights protection for persons with disabilities.  The ADA requires that students with disabilities be guaranteed a learning environment that provides for reasonable accommodation.  Any student who feels he or she may need an accommodation based on the impact of a disability should contact me privately as soon as possible to discuss his or her specific needs.  I rely on the Office of the Dean of Students to verify the need for reasonable accommodations based on documentation in that office.

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