EDU 790: Current K-12 Education Theories

Overview

Education in the United States, and to some extent in other countries of the world, is undergoing a cultural revolution. It faces multiple challenges and problems that reflect today’s controversies and that require innovative solutions.

With legislation such as “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB), accountability has become a major issue and schools are expected to provide public explanation of success. From reports of “adequate yearly progress” to evidence of teacher certification, schools must offer reliable data to show their accomplishments—and to justify their chosen methodologies for educating all of their constituents.

Therefore, educators need, perhaps more than ever before, to analyze education theories and research in order to evaluate and inform their practice. Theories provide the frameworks to understand learning and thinking. Research provides information to evaluate those theories; shows the effectiveness of curricula, instruction, and methods for assessing success; offers explanations of motivation, intention, and individual differences; and helps represent the rich diversity of the community’s members. At the institutional level, research helps us to better understand the impact of policies, politics, and education decisions.

Introduction

Students enrolled in JIU’s School of Education will work with sponsors for their professional synthesizing projects to ensure their work addresses the authentic needs of specific learning communities. It is important for students to identify a sponsor early in the course in order for the sponsor to collaborate with the student on the project. You can read more about the sponsor and access the required forms in the Sponsor Workbook.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Analyze and evaluate education theory.
• Analyze and evaluate education research.
• Create a database of predominant education theories.
• Prepare an annotated bibliography.
• Synthesize at least three resources on theory and practice in education that inform your own thinking, and help you articulate a personal framework for teaching and learning.
• Write a synthetic plan to solve an important education problem using at least one specific and current theoretical framework.

Required Texts
EDU 790 texts are available from the JIU/MBS bookstore