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Developing critical imaginations in schooling:
Alternative practices in education
Teaching today is more complex and challenging than ever before. Educators will require skills, techniques, and tools to cope with this complexity and to ethically confront the educational quandaries ahead. Creativity and innovation will be required for teachers to meet the demands of a quickly changing student population and political climate. This course will help teachers learn to respond to our current moment with critical imaginations.
An important resource for teachers, students, parents, school leaders, and community members is the long history of experimentation in the design and facilitation of public education. This course introduces students to alternative philosophies and practices in education, drawing from historical examples of creative, innovative, radical, progressive, and transformative teaching and learning. We situate ourselves amongst educators who endeavored to think about education beyond the walls of the school.
Offered in Fall 2024, EDFX 490: Beyond Four Walls, will provide students with hands-on experience with innovative and alternative education approaches in order to build student teacher capacity and develop critical imaginations for teaching in today’s context.
Course Schedule:
September: We spend September in two ways: 1) Friday morning seminars at the Bennett Centre (10am-12:20pm; 9/6, 9/13, 9/20, 9/27) and 2) meeting with our community liaison to get sorted into our field placements.
October: Field placements begin October 1st and continue through the middle of November. Students are expected to complete a minimum of 30 hours of field placement by November 21st. There are no Friday seminars during field placement.
November/December: We conclude our semester will three Friday morning seminars at Bennett Centre (11/22, 11/29, 12/6).
Take a peak at a draft course outline
What is assessment like in this course?
Assessment in this course is based an alternative approach to articulating and documenting learning. Students identify their own learning goals for their field experience through dialogue with their teacher-mentor and based on the needs of their program. Assessment is based on 1) completion of the required field components, 2) participation in course seminars and completion of reflective assignments, and 3) completion of a final creative project.
"The overall quality of this course surpassed my expectations. It was extremely well balanced in terms of in-class and field placement and assignments were beneficial to my future teacher career. At first I wasn't really sure what to expect when it came to this course or taking an additional field placement but I would recommend this course to anyone in the educational program. It is so important to see alternatives in systems and to challenge you own personal biases, this course allowed me to do so and I can confidently say that this is the first university course I've done to date that I wish was going on longer because of how much I enjoyed it, how significant the information was and how much I felt accounted for as a student."
Spring 2023 Participant
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