ED 5010 Philosophy, Ethics and Education Plymouth State University Master of Education Degree Program Winter 2011 Allan DiBiase, Instructor Brian Winslow, Graduate Teaching Assistant

This syllabus outlines the course of study for ED 5010 during the PSU Winter 2010-2011 Graduate term. Detailed information about the snowshoe section will be available in early January 2011 at http://learningat.multiply.com You can see a different season detailed currently. Just translate the gear to winter gear.

ED5010.01 3 Credits Allan DiBiase [email protected] PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS & EDUCATION Plymouth This course has an online component using Blackboard. Saturdays 9AM to 4PM: January 22, 29 and February 5, 12, 19, 26 Students must register by 1/15/11 and have winter gear and physical conditioning suitable for moderate difficulty snowshoeing in NH. Students registering must have permission of the instructor ([email protected]) and the ability to travel to off-campus locations. Students must contact the instructor via e-mail in advance of the first class to learn about the location of the first class. The course has a online component through Blackboard (WebCT). Students must be capable of 5-6 hilly miles in NH winter conditions. Detailed information about equipment and other requirements will be posted at www.learningat.multiply.com.

Plymouth State University Catalog Description for ED 5010 A study of the historical, philosophical and social-philosophic foundations of education. Emphasis placed upon the ideas of the classical, Medieval, Enlightenment and Post Enlightenment periods that have influenced types of American education systems relative to their mission and purpose. Analysis of how these systems have defined ethics and the characteristics of the virtuous person.

Winter 2011 ED 5010 Teaching Description An interdisciplinary inquiry into philosophical and ethical concerns that arise in implementing an holistic practice of education. This process involves the critical and reflective examination of traditional separations between theory and practice, means and ends, emotion and intellect, as well as challenging preconceptions about the relationship of education and schooling. Students enrolled will explore the meanings associated with critical (liberatory) pedagogy through the development of a liberalizing, learning culture in the classroom. ED 5010 fulfills the M.Ed. Core Component Course Requirement. It is offered every semester in traditional face-to-face sections and also through the development of an interactive community of inquirers within the unique design of online sections.

Texts All texts for these sections will be made available through our Blackboard website. The schedule of reading and posting will be made available the first day of each section. We'll be reading sections from Landscapes of Learning by Maxine Greene, from John Dewey's Democracy and Education and from the letters, essays, books and Journal of Henry David Thoreau. There also will be some secondary source essays about the above authors. Here is the complete list of print/online sources for materials we'll be using this winter. It may be necessary to locate the Freire/Horton book in paperback. Dewey, John (1985). Democracy and Education. Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN: 08093-1259X Dewey, John (1938). Experience and Education. Macmillian Publishing. ISBN: 0-02013660-9 Freire, Paulo and Myles Horton (1990). We Make the Road By Walking. Temple University Press. ISBN: 0-87722-775-6 Greene, Maxine (1978). Landscapes of Learning. Teachers College Press. ISBN: 0-80772534-X Lopez, Barry (1988). Crossing Open Ground. (“Narrative and Landscape”) Scribner. ISBN: 0-648-18817-1 Thoreau’s writings online: http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/writings/Writings.htm Uncommon Learning: Henry David Thoreau on Learning (1999). Editor, Martin Bickman. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN: 0-395-94797-9

How the Courses Will Run

Everyone in the above sections will be housed in a PSU Blackboard website. You'll be oriented to how to use on or before (via email) the start date of your section. The course is asynchronous....there is no scheduled time online together.

Core Definitions These definitions guide my teaching practice by coordinating it around explorations of what philosophy, education and ethics might be. Philosophy, Ethics and Education involves being observant and reflective about how each of us learns and becomes educated though the life of our living, and, also sometimes through schooling. Philosophy "....to move readers to think about their own thinking, to risk examination of what is presupposed or taken for granted, to clarify what is vague or mystifying or obscure. To "do" philosophy in this fashion is to respond to actual problems and real interests, to the requirements of sensemaking in a confusing world." Maxine Greene, Landscapes of Learning, p. 165 "Any person who is open-minded and sensitive to new perceptions, and who has concentration and responsibility in connecting them has, in so far, a philosophic disposition." John Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 335

Education "So obvious, indeed is the necessity of teaching and learning for the continued existence of a society that we may seem to be dwelling unduly on a truism. But justification for this is found in the fact that such emphasis is a means of getting us away from an unduly scholastic and formal notion; Schools are, indeed one important method of the transmission which forms the dispositions of the immature; but they are only one means, and, compared with other agencies, a relatively superficial means. Only as we have grasped the necessity of more fundamental and persistent modes of education can we make sure of placing the scholastic methods in their true context." Paraphrase, John Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 7. "Fundamentally, there is no right education except growing up into a worthwhile world." Paul Goodman, Compulsory Mis-Education, p. 59. "Education is not preparation for life. It is life itself." John Dewey “Education, when it is most authentic, centers upon the precise project of showing the student just what degree of freedom is possible for her or him in relation to the presentness of the cultural past.” Harold Bloom, from Raritan: Reading, p. 25

Ethics What we call ethics is the described sum total of an individual's conduct (thoughts and actions) in a social/cultural context. Allan DiBiase "....while we live, while we are among human beings, let us cultivate our humanity." Seneca, On Anger "To see ourselves as others see us can be eye-opening. To see others as sharing a nature with ourselves is the merest decency. But it is from the far more difficult achievement of seeing ourselves amongst others, as a local example of the forms human life has locally taken, a case among cases, a world among worlds, that the largeness of mind, without which objectivity is self-congratulation and tolerance a sham, come." Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge, p. 16

Course Objectives: Collaboration, Holism, Experience, Commitment, Knowledge ED 5010 is organized to help students become more thoughtful and articulate about educating, more critical about schooling, and finally to understand ways of making the two overlap. To this end, the course offers practice at handling different foundational conceptions about educating and seeks to put these conceptions or theories into practice through the use of a Blackboard site. Students are expected to become more thoughtful and articulate through reading and interpreting, engaging in various online activities, making a presentation to the class and leading class discussion. The focus of 5010 is about how "education" arises (or does not arise) through human conduct in groups (culture). The course emphasizes working collaboratively. Opportunity for using the Blackboard discussion board functions will allow students in both courses to post questions and answers for each other that arise over the course of the semester. ED 5010 emphasizes more than an intellectual approach to educating.....DESPITE the fact that each are concerned with different versions of philosophy. In essence, the course is a criticism of traditional disciplinary philosophy (the life of the mind) and seeks to develop a notion of philosophy that is holistic and socially relevant to our time. ED 5010 is designed to provide students with "experiences" in "doing philosophy". That is, in the American Pragmatic conception, putting ideas into action. The various courses and sections will offer the opportunity to explore this in new ways assisted by technology and in face-to-face class meetings.....with the idea that thinking members of the class will come to understand how our online experience can be translated into more conventional classroom settings.

ED 5010 offers a criticism of the tradition of Western Philosophy by advancing the notion of caring about what we do and the consequences of our doing as social beings, versus, the idea of logic and truth as remote from human experience. The mode of the course is formulated against the notion of knowledge as a body of facts established to be encountered by students in a graduate course. Rather it works to establish that, like Socrates, we have no sure Knowledge....but instead with this awareness of what we "don't know"....we seek out the best possible ways of coming to know things through using them.

Required Competencies The course requires students to have convenient access to a computer with internet connections and a degree of literacy in using the computer. E-mail (independent from Blackboard) and Blackboard discussion board functions are a necessary and valuable component of the course. Past experience has shown that the capacity to print documents from the Blackboard Site is helpful. Texts always incorporate issues of gender, sexuality, class, culture, ethnicity and religion. These issues then remain an essential critical frame of reference for understanding what it means to "do philosophy" in some way other than the received tradition of western philosophy. In all written work, students are expected to produce gender neutral prose. Please ask if you don't understand what this means. Ideally, materials should be developed using current APA style guidelines for academic prose. You can access the PSU Lamson Library reference page on APA through the Blackboard home page. However, most of our writing will be on the Blackboard discussion board which does not easily accept formatting. So, APA guidelines are relaxed for any postings there. All citations from texts must be referenced however by book and page if part of the syllabus. Other texts cited must have a full bibliographic reference per APA. Instructions, if necessary, about submitting formatted papers through the Blackboard assignments tool will be provided. The course will serve as a demonstration of dealing with the unique needs of each individual involved in the situation of instruction. This demonstration then serves as a comment on practice in other situations of instruction. This aspect of educating represents a noble ideal that is essential and consistent with a distinction between merely schooling and truly educating.

Other Required Competencies: Competencies to be Demonstrated for Particular MEd Concentration Program Standards Various major/concentrations in the Masters of Education degree at Plymouth State University require demonstrated competency in meeting articulated professional standards in a particular field. As a basic requirement ED 5010 themes bear a direct relationship to many of these

program standards. Students who are required to meet such standards (via portfolio development and/or artifact development) must make this known to the instructor. In these cases, a special formulation of the writing project at the end of the semester will allow students to demonstrate the relationship of ED 5010 to the particular program standards. Educational Leadership Studies Presently, students concentrating in Educational Leadership Studies must demonstrate a relationship between their study in ED 5010 and the following program standards: 1. Act with a reasoned understanding of major historical, philosophical, ethical, social and economic influences affecting education in a democratic society. 2. Manifest a professional code of ethics and values. 3. Design curricula with consideration for philosophical, sociological and historical foundations, democratic values and the community’s values, goals, social needs and changing conditions. 4. Apply principles of student growth and development to the learning environment and educational program. 5. Use appropriate written, verbal, and nonverbal communication in a variety of situations. 6. Articulate the district or school vision, mission, and priorities to the community and media, and build community support for district or school priorities and programs. 7. Make decisions based on the moral and ethical implications of policy options and political strategies. 8. Analyze the major philosophical tenets of contemporary intellectual movements and analyze their effect on school contexts. School Psychology 1. Cultural diversity 2. Human learning 3. Social basis of behavior 4. Organization and operation of schools 5. Legal and ethical issues

Requirements Students are required to post a public profile to Blackboard, to respond to each reading/writing prompt on the discussion board within the specified time frame as assigned, to attend all class sessions and participate in discussions, and to meet the requirements for the final written project and presentations. The course offers the opportunity to ask questions and discuss aspects of the various readings through the Blackboard Site. The following simple protocol is required. Discussion and questions should be referenced directly to the editions of the texts recommended for the course, using specific page and line numbers when available. Periodically I will respond to student postings publicly (on the discussion board) or privately via email. Students are required to read other students' work on the discussion board. This need not be (cannot be) comprehensive but it is an important dimension of the learning, especially in online sections. You will get timely feedback about how you are meeting the posting requirements as we move along. It is a requirement of the course that the postings be in place per the recommended schedule. If you are behind early in the course, you will be advised to drop. If you are behind at the end of the course, the postings cannot be "made up" (out of sequence) as the postings are part of the class social interaction as we move along....not a mechanical, individual requirement. At this point you will have the choice of an Incomplete or an F. Incompletes can only be satisfied by repeating the course entirely in another semester. It is not likely that the syllabus will be the same in another semester.

Grades The final grade is composed of the following elements: 30% Attendance and participation 40% Required, timely postings to Blackboard 30% Final Written Project Posted to Blackboard and/or Oral Presentation at Last Class The meaning of various grades in ED 5010 is roughly the following: A Exceptional demonstrated ability to work with, express and practice the core concepts and theories of the course. My standard for an "A" is that you are teaching me something new about the content of the course. A- Great work.....good ability to handle the course material......good written expression.....thoughtful engagement.

B+ Perhaps you are not working up to your potential? You'll know where you need to make more effort by the end of the course. If you don't, please ask. B An okay grade....but there are problems in the way you have addressed the core concepts, and/or, your writing is not up to a minimal standard for graduate education. Where you need work will be clear to you by the end of the semester. If it isn't, please ask. B- The absolute minimal engagement. This grade means that you related to the course as a schooling requirement and/or did not complete a requirement of the course. Probably you shouldn't be doing graduate work. Anything below B- in this course is a failing grade. Most likely a failing grade means you didn't produce a substantial basic requirement of the course.

Communication Through the ED 5010 Winter 2011 Blackboard website. Or, use the following e-mail addresses: Brian Winslow at [email protected] Allan DiBiase regarding content of the course at [email protected] Arrange for F2F Office meetings at PSU via e-mail please. Home Phone: 603-284-7569 Home Address: PO Box 302, Center Sandwich, NH 03227-0302