University of Texas at Austin (CorruptED)

Incidents


The University of Texas at Austin’s Bachelor of Science in Applied Learning and Development degree track required courses include topics such as critical race theory, decolonization, tenets of queer theory, racial microaggressions, restorative justice, and white supremacy. Course readings include Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Peggy McIntosh’s White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.

The course ALD 327: Sociocultural Influences on Learning features topics such as critical race theory, decolonization, intersectionality, queer theory, racial microaggressions, and white supremacy. Course texts include Bell Hooks’ Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom.

The course description states that a “sociocultural, sociohistorical, and sociopolitical lens will be utilized to critically examine issues pertaining to minoritized and historically marginalized groups.” It will “explore the complex relationships between schools and the larger society, especially in terms of social, cultural, racial, and economic inequities” and “will review her/his/they stories and consider the complex ways that settler-colonialism, social constructions of race and gender, capitalism, neoliberalism, im/migration, and socio-economic class intersect and influence the schooling experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC).”

The course will interrogate “issues of power and privilege” to “understand how they influence one’s perception of teaching, pedagogy, education policy, and curriculum.”

A 2020 section of the course states that students will study the “intersecting social structures of settler colonialism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism in order to better understand ourselves in relation to our communities and society, and in order to explore and imagine what kind of teaching work can meet the challenges of the world in which we presently live.”

Course topics include white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, “consequences of color-blind racial ideologies,” and “tenets of queer theory.” Readings include Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege” and selections from Paulo Freire.

A 2017 version of the course features topics such as “critical pedagogy,” “colonizing knowledges,” tenets of queer theory, and “white supremacy.”


The course ALD 328: Introduction to Teaching: Applied Learning and Development (AKA “Practicing Activist Teaching”) includes the reading of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and William Ayers’ To Teach.


The course ALD 331: Restorative Practices in Education is “devoted to learning about and implementing restorative practices in education. It will focus on exploring models of education discipline policies and practices (e.g., zero-tolerance policy, suspension, expulsion), and how it adversely affects students’ social and emotional development and academic trajectories; and most importantly, how restorative practices could serve as an alternative model to address discipline in schools.”


The course EDP 383C: Social Emotional Assessment of Children and Adolescents overview states that it will “develop knowledge and skills in evidence based social-emotional assessment of youth. The emphasis of the course will be on conducting and interpreting evidence-based assessments of children’s social, emotional, and behavioral functioning, including the diagnosis of mental health disorders in youth.”