Education

This course provides an introduction to youth studies, with a particular focus on the association between youth and the globalizing world. The course considers a broad body of interdisciplinary scholarships such as history, education, politics, and the environment. Students discuss the increasing use of social media by youth movements in creating changes in society and the notion of young people as the agents of change. This course brings in perspectives from various parts of the world through diverse reading materials. The reading materials provide a fundamental understanding of youth studies (Cieslik and Simpson, 2013), global situation of young people (UN, 2003), and engage critically in the discussion of youth as an agent of change (Sukarieh and Tannock, 2015; Kwon, 2013).

This course is an upper-division introduction to linguistics, the scientific study of human language, and to what characterizes human language and makes it different from other animal communication systems and other human cognitive systems. The course introduces the different components that human language is made of and how linguists investigate them. In particular, it looks at sounds (and signs) and how they can be combined to form bigger units up to words (phonetics, phonology, and morphology); it looks at words and how they can be combined to form bigger units up to sentences (syntax); finally, it looks at how words and sentences can be used to convey meaning (semantics and pragmatics). While doing so, it emphasizes the innate cognitive aspects of human language but also touches on those aspects that are sensitive to culture and society and determine some of the variation and differences among human languages. Some of the question the course addresses include: what is a language and what does knowledge of a language consist of; are human languages fundamentally different from other systems of animal communication; are some languages better than others; what's a dialect and how does it compare to a language; how do children acquire language, does our knowledge of language derive entirely from experience, or do humans come “hardwired” with certain innate capacities for language; how do languages develop and change over time? For practical reasons, English is the primary source of data and examples for the course for practical reasons as the lingua franca. Still, data from other languages are presented throughout the course, with special attention to Italian, other languages (aka "dialects") spoken in Italy, and languages spoken by the students in the course.

This course investigates how concepts of childhood and youth came about (and are constantly reinvented) in the context of particular social and economic conditions. This course considers how the lives of children and young people today have been shaped by historical and global contexts, and by different national, cultural, religious, social, and economic circumstances. It explores the histories of children and young people at work, at play, and in education, and how these histories shape childhood and youth in different global contexts today.

This course introduces students to the theoretical and practical aspects of sport and exercise coaching. Through active participation in lectures, tutorials and practical workshops, students learn how to create a positive sporting environment by utilizing athlete-centered coaching strategies. Students also learn how to evaluate and improve their own coaching performance by applying reflective and evaluative skills. Topics covered include coaching, training and management principles, coaching pedagogy, planning, skill learning and sports psychology. Students also complete the beginning coaching general principles course. At the completion of this course, students are more confident and knowledgeable in their coaching practice.