UMass Boston

Course Overview

Description

This course is designed to provide students a basis for a more comprehensive understanding of the various concepts and meanings of culture and the ways in which cultural practices help shape our identities, particularly how they are enacted and received in classrooms and second language education. The readings, discussions, and assignments are aimed toward developing potential pedagogical tools and educational programs that will be grounded in the research and concepts presented and explored in this course. The main goal is for students to develop their own personal, theoretically-grounded approach to teaching that facilitates cross-cultural communication in addressing the socially constructed notions and identifications of `race' and their ensuing identities in the multilingual classroom. Both theories and practical research from the second language classroom and other domains will be illustrated. By writing about and discussing readings drawn from a broad literature base, students will analyze how multiple phenomena of culture and identity (e.g., power, race, nationality, ethnicity, gender, language, sexuality, and class, among other factors) affect schools, the classroom, teachers, and students.

Prerequisites

APLING-MA