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Highlights For:
Education, Culture, and Society (ECS)
M.S.Ed. Ph.D.
The ECS program provides students with a strong theoretical and disciplinary foundation for the study of a broad range of educational processes across the life span. The program focuses on how education (broadly conceived) is shaped by the dynamic and changing structures of society, culture, and political economy in our contemporary world. On the other hand, educational phenomena are crucial to the understanding of a wide variety of social processes such as identity formation, immigration, nationalism, globalization, state formation, and political and economic transformations. The program asks students to pay attention to the interplay between these broader processes and the local contexts in which they play out and to the ethical issues that underlie educational practice. Thus, the program explores education as a deeply social, cultural, political, and moral activity.
ECS students focus on a wide range of contexts of learning: schools, out-of-school programs, NGOs, families, peer groups, media, neighborhoods, and communities, both within the US and internationally. The program places particular emphasis on providing rigorous training in ethnographic methods, and many students choose to study discourse analysis as well. Students supplement their educational studies with significant coursework in a discipline of their choosing, such as anthropology, sociology, history, urban studies, philosophy, or linguistics.
Master of Science in Education (M.S.Ed.)
The FPE master’s degree program provides students with an introduction to research, theory, and conceptual frameworks that underlie a broad range of educational practices in and out of school. Course work provides opportunities for students to explore how education, broadly conceived, is shaped by the dynamic and changing structures of society, culture, and political economy in the contemporary world. The program design allows students to choose their own area of emphasis, related courses, and topic for a master's research paper, focusing on education across a wide range of contexts, including: schools, out-of-school programs, families, peer groups, media, neighborhoods, and transnational communities.
The program offers two areas of emphasis: Educational Foundations and Teaching and Learning. Educational Foundations considers disciplinary approaches to studying the role of education in a variety of social processes, such as citizenship and nationalism, identity formation, immigration, globalization, and political and economic transformations. Teaching and Learning places primary emphasis on educational practices and processes of learning in K-12 schools, community institutions, and families. Regardless of emphasis, the program asks students to pay attention to the interplay between these broader processes and the local contexts in which they play out. Many courses are interdisciplinary emphasizing urban and international issues and perspectives and drawing on frameworks from disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, political science, philosophy, psychology, and linguistics.
The program prepares students for doctoral study as well as for careers in schools and other educational institutions. Graduates go on to work in K-12 schools, non-profit curriculum consulting groups, research and evaluation groups, in addition to doctoral programs. The program requires a minimum of 10 course units of approved graduate work beyond the baccalaureate degree. Students complete a set of core courses, including one that satisfies a distributional requirement, and write a master’s research paper in order to complete the degree requirements.
Program of Study
Core Courses:
EDUC 544 School and Society in America EDUC 668 Master’s Paper Seminar One Program Emphasis Course: EDUC 547 Anthropology and Education (For Foundations emphasis) EDUC 616 Master’s Foundations of Teaching and Learning (For Teaching and Learning emphasis) One Research Methodology Course: EDUC 545 Qualitative Modes of Inquiry EDUC 667 Introductory Statistics for Educational Research One Distribution Course One course taken within GSE, but outside of the Foundations and Practices of Education Division. Five Elective Courses, such as: EDUC 511 Equality EDUC 518 Authority, Freedom, and Disciplinary Policies EDUC 524 Philosophy of Educational Policy EDUC 532 School Law EDUC 545 Global Citizenship EDUC 545 Philosophical Aspects of Education EDUC 545 Liberalism and Multiculturalism EDUC 564 Moral Values and the Schools EDUC 576 The Social and Political Philosophy of Education EDUC 590 Gender and Education EDUC 611 Education, Development and Globalization EDUC 619 Critical Perspectives in Contemporary Urban Education EDUC 665 Research on Teaching
Program Faculty:
Sigal Ben-Porath, Ph.D., Tel Aviv University Joan Goodman, Ed.D., Harvard University Kathleen Hall, Ph.D., University of Chicago Yasmin Kafai, Ed.D., Harvard University Sharon Ravitch, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania Janine Remillard, Ph.D., Michigan State University Katherine Schultz, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania Susan Yoon, Ph.D., OISE/University of Toronto Stanton E.F. Wortham, Ph.D., University of Chicago
To view GSE course offerings, click here.
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
The ECS Ph.D. program provides students with a strong theoretical and disciplinary foundation for the study of a broad range of educational processes across the life span. The program focuses on how social, cultural, and political-economic processes shape the purposes and role of education in society. On the other hand, educational phenomena are crucial to the understanding of a wide variety of social processes, such as identity formation, immigration, citizenship, nationalism, globalization, state formation, and political and economic transformations. The ECS program combines these perspectives to consider how education becomes a site for the working out of broader sociocultural and political dilemmas and dynamics in ways that both reproduce and transform aspects of modern social life.
ECS doctoral students develop both interdisciplinary and disciplinary expertise, and focus in their dissertation research on a wide range of contexts of learning: schools, out-of-school programs, NGOs, families, peer groups, media, neighborhoods, and communities, both within the US and internationally. The program places particular emphasis on providing rigorous training in ethnographic methods, and many students choose to study discourse analysis as well. Most students supplement their educational studies with significant coursework in a discipline of their choosing, such as anthropology, sociology, history, urban studies, philosophy, or linguistics. It is possible to pursue a joint Ph.D. degree in Education and either Anthropology, Sociology, or History.
The Ph.D. in Education, Culture, and Society prepares students for careers as researchers, particularly within universities, but also in research institutes, government agencies, and non-profit organizations.
The program includes formal courses, mentored research, and informal seminars. Students take several core courses, required research methods courses, and additional specialization and elective courses as determined by their individualized planned program of study. All doctoral students take a set of written examinations in the area of specialization and complete a dissertation on a problem in education to complete the course of study. The program will accept up to eight course units of relevant graduate-level coursework towards the degree taken prior to enrollment at Penn GSE.
Sample Ph.D. Course Plan
Core Courses: EDUC 646 Education, Culture, and Society EDUC 664 Doctoral Foundations of Teaching and Learning EDUC 545 Social Theory and Educational Research EDUC 621 Doctoral Proseminar Introductory Research Methodology Courses: EDUC 545 Qualitative Modes of Inquiry EDUC 667 Introductory Statistics for Educational Research Additional Research Methodology Courses, such as: EDUC 517 Classroom Discourse and Interaction EDUC 645 Methods of Discourse Analysis EDUC 672 Ethnographic Research Methods EDUC 700 Advanced Ethnographic Research Design EDUC 845 Seminar in Microethnography Two Social Foundations of Education Courses, such as: EDUC 511 Equality EDUC 524 Philosophy of Educational Policy EDUC 545 Liberalism and Multiculturalism EDUC 547 Anthropology and Education EDUC 558 Sociology of Education (or SOC 596) EDUC 576 The Social and Political Philosophy of Education EDUC 611 Education, Development, and Globalization EDUC 647 Linguistic Anthropology of Education EDUC 648 Philosophy of Education EDUC 706 Culture/Power/Identities EDUC 806 Narrating the Self Elective Courses Additional electives as determined by individual program plan
Program Faculty
Sigal Ben-Porath, Ph.D., Tel Aviv University Kathleen Hall, Ph.D., University of Chicago Sharon Ravitch, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania Stanton E. F. Wortham, Ph.D., University of Chicago
Program Contact
Vernell Edwards, MSOD, Coordinator
Foundations and Practices in Education University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education 3700 Walnut Street, Room 413 Philadelphia, PA 19104-6216 Phone: 215-746-2566 edwardsv@gse.upenn.edu
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