Participants discover threads that tie diverse cultures together through their literacies and oral traditions, and discuss implications for their own attitudes and classrooms. Seminars are devoted to enlarging the participants understanding through close reading, attentive listening, clear expression, weighing evidence, exploring different views and analyzing logical arguments. Students develop knowledge and understanding of the processes and skills that join learning and literacies education. At the conclusion of this course, students will have a clearly articulated theory of learning as it relates to literacy and literacy education as applied across grade levels and content areas. Participants identify teaching-learning questions arising from their own situations and learn techniques and resources for their research studies.
Participants conduct research in their respective classroom, analyze data and draw conclusions.
Students learn various ways to present research findings, then choose an appropriate format to share their findings with colleagues both in the program and in the larger community. This course takes participants through the process of discovering how curriculum is developed in student-centered classrooms. Distinctions among adopting, adapting and designing curriculum are examined. A variety of evaluative procedures are discussed as an integral part of the curriculum design and instructional practice. Students design curricula and evaluation procedures for their classrooms based on the specific cultural characteristics of their individual school communities.