EDU 3500 - Diversity and Education (with Lab)

Goals: Understand the impact of diversity in the classroom: race, culture and ethnicity, class, gender, disability, language, and sexual orientation. Explore nature, causes, and effects of prejudice. Experience instructional methods that enhance the school success of all children. Approved by the Minnesota Department of Education as satisfying the Education 521 Human Relations requirement.

Content: Students will examine how students’ culture, religion, race, gender, class and abilities, as well as their interactions with teachers and peers, play important roles in shaping their achievement, adjustment and identity in schools; study how our personal identities and cultural histories of race, class, gender, ability, and sexuality affect our teaching philosophies, and explore how our personal values and beliefs shape our teaching practices; investigate the popular myths and histories we have learned in our own schooling, families, and social experiences and survey how the forms of truth and fiction portrayed by popular sources such as school textbooks and media shape our values and beliefs; identify the implications of inclusive and non-inclusive education, specifically looking at ways to create a positive classroom climate that enhances the academic and social experiences of all students.

Taught: Fall and spring terms

Prerequisites: EDU 1150 and EDU 1250

Note: Students must concurrently register for a lecture and a corresponding 0-credit lab section of this course.

The lab consists of a 20-hour required clinical in a local school. Students who have transferred in the equivalent course content without clinical experience should see the Department Chair to coordinate enrollment in a 1-credit Independent Study to earn the course equivalent.

Credits: 4