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  2. EDU S800

Ph.D. in Education Proseminar
EDU S800

Course Information

Description

This is the one course all PhD students in Education must take. It is an intensive seminar designed to enable all first-year Ph.D. in Education students to describe, analyze, and assess key questions, texts, ideas, and approaches to educational scholarship. The goal is to provide students an intellectual foundation for developing their understandings about the field of education, who they are as researchers and educators, and who their community will be as they learn more about both over the whole PhD program. We will pay particular attention to the multidisciplinary nature of much educational research, how individual disciplines and theoretical traditions approach educational questions in complementary or contrasting ways, and what roles educational research plays in policy and practice. The course will also attend to the interaction of normative, epistemological, methodological, and empirical dimensions of research. In addition to engaging with a body of knowledge and skills that can support them in their work as education doctoral students and researchers, students will have opportunities to connect the intellectual lenses that we explore collectively in the seminar to their more specific research questions, and to share their individual experiences and expertise with the cohort.
Permission of instructor required. Required for, and limited to, first year students enrolled in the Ph.D. in Education Program.

School Graduate School of Education
Credits 4
Cross Reg

Available for Harvard Cross Registration

Department Education
Course Component Regular Course
Instruction Mode In Person
Subject Education
Grading Basis HGSE Letter Graded
Learning Goals <p>Together in this course, we will:<br>- Name and discuss a wide variety of key theories and concepts within educational research<br>- Draw upon foundational and contemporary texts from a variety of disciplines in order to address key questions in educational research, policy, and practice<br>- Write clear, compelling, short analytic papers that defend an interesting and contestable thesis using evidence synthesized from multiple sources<br>- Place newly-encountered readings, research studies, and research agendas (including our own!) into historical and/or disciplinary context<br>- Analyze, and potentially evaluate, research works in light of our theoretical, disciplinary, methodological, normative, and/or epistemological presuppositions, including in discussions and in one short analytic paper and one generals-like exam process<br>- Work with assigned research librarian to identify and keep track of research literature that is relevant to each students’&nbsp; interests and also broadly informative to the field, as the first step in your doctoral milestone Field Statement<br>- Co-create a constructively critical, collegial, and productive learning environment in and out of class, in person, in conversation, and in writing <br><br>Taken together, the above learning goals should enable students to prepare for and write cogent answers to questions on Part A of the General Written Exam. These learning goals are also the only ones that will be assessed and graded.<br><br>- Discuss a variety of possible (mis)connections and relationships among educational research(ers), policy (makers), and practice (or practitioners), in part in order to start identifying where we wish to position ourselves and conduct our own work within this nexus<br>- Identify some faculty at HGSE with whom we want to connect, whether by taking a course, participating in a research apprenticeship, or just showing up at office hours<br>- Affirm each of our strengths and identify areas for growth as educational researchers-in-training<br>- Identify at least two peers with whom you have formed an intellectually rewarding relationship, as demonstrated (ideally) by collective membership in a writing and/or discussion group that lasts through the first year and beyond<br><br>We hope that, together, we can embrace the idea that there is value in reading and talking about topics, ideas, disciplines, and methodological approaches that interest us and connect to our own intended research. But also that there is perhaps even greater value in the topics/days/readings that feel new, that start from a perspective that has never occurred to us, that even seems wrongheaded. We look forward to the learning that can happen in these spaces!</p>
Career Focus N/A
Competency N/A
Content N/A
Pedagogy N/A