Education

This course examines key concepts in education, including pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment. These concepts are discussed within the context of four interrelated themes: (1) New times and practices for teaching and learning; (2) Knowledge, culture and curriculum; (3) Teaching as a process and way of life; (4) Teachers as learners and researchers.

This course explores the major conceptual and theoretical bases underlying western psychological approaches to the study of human growth and development. It is also an introduction to the techniques used in the scientific study of human growth and development.

The course deals with the wide theme of the skills necessary to form citizens who are able to face the challenges of contemporary life and to meet and interpret forms of citizenship that are much broader than national or European ones, including global ones: a citizenship, therefore, aware and active, oriented to the values of civil coexistence and the common good, to the relationship with the environment according to sustainable approaches. In this perspective, active citizenship education is linked to the concepts of empowerment, the recognition of one's own and others’ identity, autonomy, cooperation, the values of social solidarity and respect for the other, overcoming the discrimination of gender, to the possibilities of change. In particular, the course presents some fundamental concepts of citizenship education and active participation (identity, community, belonging, stereotypes/prejudges, etc.) and, starting from these, the course focuses on the role of the student and her/his active participation in civil society, school, and university contexts as a "training gym" to exercise her/his citizenship rights and duties.

This course responds to the need of the Korean society to campaign for education reform in order to address social issues that result from the increasing multi cultural characterization of Korea. In particular, this course is aimed at: helping recognize and challenge biases and notions of race, culture, language, social justice, and multi cultural education; increasing the awareness levels on the problems and opportunities that multiculturalism brings to the society; and building the capacity to exercise affirmative action and leadership in theoretical and practical ways. The theoretical approach is done by immersing into schools of thought that help explain the multicultural state of Korea, while the practical is done by conducting a community project, which deals with a social issue or phenomenon that relates to both multicuturalism and education or multicultural education in Korea. The project prompts the students to investigate a problem, project, or program in the community and analyze it extensively using a rubric that is proposed and agreed upon in class.