The Education Minor is designed for students who wish to supplement their academic major with studies in the field of education. The Education Minor allows students to explore the intersection of their chosen major and career path with the field of education, without committing to becoming a classroom teacher. The Education Minor provides a deep study into to how political, cultural, social and historical dynamics shape both policy and practice in education, as well as opportunities to focus on particular areas of education as a field of study and practice.
The minor, comprising three credit hours of core coursework and 15 credit hours of electives, is available to all undergraduates. Students are encouraged to meet with an education advisor to help determine which elective courses provide the best opportunities to supplement their specific field of study and/or explore a career path in the field of education.
Requirements
Declaration Process and Minor Requirements
Students may declare the Education Minor at any point in their undergraduate career. To declare the Education Minor, please submit a declaration form online on the School of Education website.
A B (3.00) grade point average must be maintained in education minor coursework (with C- as lowest acceptable course grade) to complete the minor.
Required Courses and Credits
| Code | Title | Credit Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Core Course | 3 | |
| School and Society | ||
| Elective Options | 15 | |
| Choose 5 courses from the options below: | ||
| Energy and Interactions - Models | ||
| Designing STEM Learning Environments and Experiences | ||
| History of American Public Education | ||
| Teaching and Learning Math: Calculus, Trig and Adv Functions | ||
| Education in Film | ||
| Children's Literature and Literacy Engagement in Elementary Schools | ||
| Children's Learning and Development | ||
| Teaching English Language Development | ||
| Renewing Democracy in Communities and Schools | ||
| Education in Action: Fieldwork, Policy and Pedagogy Across Contexts | ||
| Race, Class, and Gender in Young Adult Literature | ||
| Learning With Technology In and Out of School | ||
| International / Comparative Education | ||
| Knowing and Learning in Mathematics and Science | ||
| Cultural Mentoring with Dual Language Learners | ||
| Adolescent Development and Learning for Teachers | ||
| Secondary World Language Methods | ||
| Language and Literacy across the Curriculum | ||
| African American Education in the United States | ||
| Immigrants and Education | ||
| Queer(ing) Topics in Education | ||
| Social and Emotional Learning in Schools | ||
| Perspectives on Mathematics | ||
| Introduction to Bilingual/Multicultural Education | ||
| Teaching and Learning Physics | ||
| Language Acquisition for Bilingual Learners | ||
| Basic Statistical Methods | ||
| Race and its Implications for Science Education | ||
| Teaching and Learning Biology | ||
| Teaching K-12 Mathematics: Number Sense | ||
| Teaching K-12 Mathematics: Algebraic Thinking | ||
| Teaching K-12 Mathematics: Geometry & Measurement | ||
| Teaching K-12 Mathematics: Probability & Statistics | ||
| Teaching and Learning Chemistry | ||
| Teaching and Learning Earth Systems | ||
| Teaching and Learning Computational Thinking | ||
| The Chicana and Chicano and U.S. Social Systems | ||
| Teaching Design | ||
| Facilitating Peaceful Community Change | ||
| Total Credit Hours | 18 | |
Learning Outcomes
The education minor curriculum values and promotes the central role of education for preparing critically/socially engaged and democratically-minded citizens for an increasingly complex, socially diverse, and culturally rich world. The education minor curriculum organizes learning experiences for non-majors that foster, among other things, critical awareness, empathy, flexibility, vulnerability, open-mindedness, imagination, comfort with ambiguity, and an understanding of common experiences, amidst diverse contexts and student histories.
By the completion of the program, students will be able to:
- Examine the historical, cultural and ideological contexts of public schooling.
- Explore theories of learning across families, schools, peer groups, communities and cultures.
- Analyze and explore a self-selected range of topics related to education and connected to major areas of study, for example: roles and meanings of education in a democratic society; justice and equity in education; creativity and agency of youth from non-dominant backgrounds; explorations of popular representations or conventional narratives of students, teachers, and schooling; perspectives on multicultural and bilingual education; perspective on learning mathematics; teaching and reading children’s literature.