University of Utah (CorruptED)

The University of Utah’s College of Education – Department of Education, Culture, and Society courses include content such as critical theory, critical race theory, queer theory, white privilege, and whiteness. Texts used in courses include bell hooks, Robin DiAngelo, and Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

COURSES

ECS 3150: Introduction to Multicultural Education

The course titled ECS 3150 – Introduction to Multicultural Education includes topics such as critical pedagogy, critical theory, critical race theory, queer theory, oppression, white privilege, and whiteness.

The required course features the works of Glenn Singleton’s Courageous Conversations, bell hooks, Robin DiAngelo, and Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Session topics include “critical social justice,” “critical theory,” “oppression and power,” “whiteness,” “white privilege,” “microaggressions,” “straight privilege,” “critical race theory,” and “queering schools.”

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The University of Utah College of Education offers students graduate programs through the Department of Education, Culture, and Society (ECS), which was created specifically for the “study and pursuit of social justice in education.” The mission statement of ECS explains that its “coursework is designed to help graduate students construct a better understanding of patterns in educational inequality.”

The ECS Masters of Education (M.Ed) allows students to choose between two areas of emphasis: Social Foundations Education or Teaching for Transformation.

COURSES

The ECS Social Foundations Education tracks offers courses in:

ECS 6646: Racial Battle Fatigue in Education

ECS 6646 concerns itself with the “study of the racialized mechanisms by which U.S. educational institutions foster and maintain hostile environments and racial microaggressions.” The course considers the “kinds of institutional climates that have historically existed in our society” and then reviews “the major explanations social analysts have developed to account for why People of Color, in general, and African American, Latino, and Pacific Islander American males, in particular, are stratified in inferior statuses in the United States based upon disparate treatment.”

ECS 6624: Whiteness Theory and Education

ECS 6624 examines “theories that denormalize and decenter whiteness as the fallback framework for democracy and education” and “explores implications for pedagogy, policy, and educational relationships.”

ECS 6625: Critical Race Theories: A Focus on FemCrit and LatCrit

ECS 6625 is designed to “help students enhance their understanding of Critical Race Theory, Critical Race Feminism, and Latina/o Critical Race Theory, all emerging in the field of education.”

ECS 6662: Seminar on Gender and Sexuality in Education

ECS 6662 addresses a variety of topics regarding gender and sexuality in education. Possible seminar topics include “Youth Identities, Gender, Sexuality, and Schooling,” “Queer Theory in Education,” and “Masculinities and Sexual Politics in Urban Education.” The course draws from literature from “cultural studies, feminist theory, queer theory, sociology of education, anthropology of education, philosophy of education and history of education.”

ECS 6644: Education & Racial Stratification

ECS 6644 is a seminar that “examines the varied and complex interplay between social stratification and education with the central issue being equality of opportunity.” The course focuses mainly on “education inequities” and also explores “the broader issues of barriers to access,” highlighting its “ascriptive factors (i.e. race, ethnicity, class and gender) that are frequently associated with the distribution of educational opportunities.”

ECS 6622: Feminist Epistemologies and Pedagogies

ECS 6622 focuses on “the role played by public vs. private assumptions in knowledge; individual and group experience, power, and difference.” This course “highlights standpoint theories and explores differences between feminist positions on knowledge and education.”

ECS 6614: The Culture Wars and Educational Policy

ECS 6614 focuses upon subjects such as “multicultural education, affirmative action in admissions, religion in the curriculum, and inclusion of gay and lesbian students.”

ECS 6627: Race, Culture, & Representation and Education

ECS 6627 utilizes the disciplines of “gender studies” and “postcolonial studies” in order to “examine the contested and critical questions of truth and knowledge as well as illuminate issues of power, and resistance to oppression in cultural studies and educational theory.”

ECS 6828: Whiteness in Cross-Race Classroom Relationships

ECS 6828 examines the “role of whiteness in cross-race classroom relationships, with a goal of fostering more productive dialogue and listening across races.” The course explores “what productive cross-race communication in education entails.”

ECS 6643: Affirmative Action & Diversity Policies in U.S. Higher Education

ECS 6643 is designed to “provide a foundation for those implementing an affirmative action program or conducting research on the topic.”

ECS 6822: Pacific Islander Indigenous Education

ECS 6822 examines “education as a tool for empowerment, resistance, and healing within varied Indigenous communities.” The course topics covered include: “Native/Indigenous epistemology, decolonizing methodologies, settler colonialism, cultural reclamation, and critical pedagogy.”

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The ECS Teaching Transformation track offers courses in:

ECS 6665/7665: Visual Arts and Social Justice Inquiry

ECS 6665/7665 addresses the ways in which “the visual arts (both within and outside of schools) can help shape our understanding of educational equity and promote engagement with social justice inquiry.” Students are required to submit a final paper that takes one of two forms: “a theoretical discussion of an issue in social justice and art education; or a project that involves teaching art in relation to social justice (either in the community or in the schools).”

ECS 6631: Minorities, Diversity, and Control in Public Schools

ECS 6631 addresses “issues of power and diversity regarding racial minorities in public schools. Social and theoretical constructions of diversity in education will be discussed in relation to the schools and various critical positions through research, social justice, policy, and equity.”

ECS 6655: Critical Pedagogy

ECS 6655 considers “a variety of pedagogies devoted to pursuing social change through education. The critical pedagogies of Paulo Freire, Ira Shor, and Henry Giroux are discussed.” The course also studies “feminist pedagogies which criticize and develop out of critical pedagogies.”