Curriculum and Instruction Course Descriptions
ECI 510 Research in Education
This course affords the graduate student an overview of the methods used in educational research. Students will study and apply different methods of quantitative and qualitative research. The course will further increase a student’s understanding of research methodology and design. The central focus will be on action research which will lead to the culminating project within the Master’s Program. At the completion of this course, students will have identified their thematic concerns and will have begun the cycle of action research.
ECI 520 Seminar: Reflections on a Climate for Learning
This course defines curriculum as a planned educational response to the needs of society and the individual. It requires that the learner construct knowledge, attitudes, values, and skills through a complex interplay of mind, materials, and social interactions. Upon examining current theories and trends in curriculum and assessment design, students will reflect upon climates for acquiring knowledge by transforming curriculum into active and meaningful learning experiences.
ECI 530 Educational Explorations in Diversity
This course is designed to provide theoretical and applied knowledge of practical methods, strategies, and techniques used to successfully meet the diverse needs of today’s inclusive classroom.
ECI 540 Learning, Thinking and the Curriculum
This course is designed to examine theories of learning and thinking as they interact with the elementary classroom disciplines. Curriculum will be reviewed to determine if skill development correlates with the theorists’ contribution regarding the learning process.
ECI/HUM 550 Narrative Practicum and Workshop
This course teaches advanced skills for taking research experiences and turning them into effective narratives, appropriate to be incorporated into thesis projects. The course begins with exercises on building style. Thereafter, the course will examine what narrative (or, as it is sometimes known, storytelling) is and how, when used effectively, it can serve as an impressive vehicle for imparting a complete picture of a research problem and findings. Essays will be examined which successfully braid personal experience, research, fieldwork, and other components into complex, interconnected narratives. Short preliminary essay assignments will prepare the student to begin to use narrative form to convey their research findings. The second half of the semester will be structured as a workshop, with students presenting rough and then final drafts of their own extended, braided narratives for in-class critique, in an ongoing process of revision toward a final product. At semester’s end, students will hand in a portfolio of revised writings, including all draft stages of all assignments and final revisions.
ECI/HUM 560 The Essay Tradition: Classic and Contemporary Essays on Learning and Language
The course surveys non-fiction prose from Ancient Culture to Postmodernity with particular emphasis on the development of the essay tradition in English. Special attention is paid to essays within the Humanities that address issues of learning and language. In the first half of the term, students read and respond to representative pieces of non-fiction prose from the Ancients to the Victorians, and in the second half, they read and respond to representative pieces of non-fiction prose from writers of the modern and postmodern periods. Throughout the term, students study the rhetorical and formal characteristics of essays, examine the historical, social, and political conditions that shape the production and reception of essays, and investigate the importance of the essay form to the production and communication of knowledge and meaning.
ECI/APY 570 Socio-Cultural Anthropology
A graduate level introduction to the social science discipline of anthropology. Utilizing the discipline’s cross-cultural perspective, the course focuses on the interplay between the biological and socio-cultural elements in human behavior, issues regarding human nature and development, and the importance of social and cultural factors in human adaptation. Students will explore the principles of ethnographic research and the potential for applying anthropology’s insights to other fields of endeavor.
ECI/SSC 580 Leadership: A Social Perspective
This course is designed to provide students with a survey of patterns of human interaction and leadership in different cultural and social settings. It also exposes students to leadership development models in contemporary society. Attributes of both past and contemporary leaders and followers will be examined while students develop a model of their personal philosophy or approach to leadership as well as skills needed to analyze organizational dynamics.
ECI 610 Transitions from Education’s Roots to the Present
This course provides a bridge from the works of past theorists and practitioners to current ideas and innovative teaching procedures of present day educators. A core of influential thinkers, such as Dewey, Skinner, Rogers, Piaget, and Gardner, etc., will be used.
ECI 624 Theory and Practice of Curriculum Development
The focus of this course is the application of curriculum theory to classroom practice. The students will experience the spectrum of curriculum design and explore the historical roots of current curriculum issues and practices. Students will critique the changing concepts of curriculum, conflicting curriculum and educational rationales and influences for and against change. The students will be able to discuss major crosscurrents in reform and reconstruction and will focus on curriculum research and improvement. Through a critically reflective orientation to curriculum work, students will begin to develop their own theories that will influence their development and implementation of curriculum.
ECI 634 Evaluation of Curriculum
This course is designed to investigate the background and current status of assessment. Principles, purposes, and procedures used to evaluate curriculum and pupil progress will be reviewed. An emphasis will be placed on the effective interpretation of evaluative data, methods of recording and reporting progress.
ECI 695 Seminar: Teacher as Researcher
This directed project requires student cohorts to become involved in the internal workings of an educational institution. In light of action research and using appropriate technology, the student cohorts will not only identify an educational problem or concern within the arena of education, but they will also reflect upon and research some of the solutions to that problem. The problem/concern will be identified early in the graduate program and carried to its required completion in this culminating activity as it is researched appropriately in lieu of the knowledge gained within the various required/selected courses throughout this graduate program.
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