Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study/Educational Specialist* in Integrated Teaching Through the Arts (33 Credits)
*The program is called Educational Specialist in certain states where it is offered.
This Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study/Educational Specialist program is designed for educators with a Master's degree and an interest in integrated arts, critical pedagogy, multicultural and equity education, teacher leadership, and action research. It emphasizes the development of inquiry skills through research methods and arts-based courses that serve to access the power of the arts in the context of meaningful school reform and social change. These two strands enhance, reinforce, and inform one another as they are synthesized in a final research project.
Program participants will develop leadership skills and strategies that give teachers voice, power, and influence as they serve as agents of change in their schools and communities, working with various stakeholder groups--students, teachers, parents, administrators, and community leaders. They will reflect upon and develop their teaching skills, acquire action research skills, become comfortable with the creative process, and learn to think as artists, leaders, researchers, critics, and advocates for change. Teachers are also encouraged to explore parent and community involvement as a crucial factor in providing an equitable and democratic education to students.
The classroom environment is participatory, hands-on, and experiential as students learn in, with, and through the arts. Students are asked to focus their action research on existing issues within their own classrooms, schools, districts and/or communities. The arts are present and prevalent, not only as ways of knowing, but as models of critical and creative thinking, problem-solving, research documentation and dissemination, and personal reflection and renewal.
Program format. The program uses a cohort model of instruction, wherein students go through the program together, forming a shared, collegial, safe, and peer-supported learning community. Each course is delivered in two weekends, a month apart, with considerable independent work to be completed between class weekends, and final assignments, papers and projects due 3-4 weeks following the second weekend of class. Students will need basic computer skills and web availability for accessing online course materials and components. The 33-credit program of study consists of eleven courses, three semester hours each, and is typically completed in approximately two years.
EARED and EARTS courses formerly GARED and GARTS, prior to June 1, 2009.
| PROGRAM OF STUDY | CREDITS | |
| EARED 7104 | Integrated Arts Seminar | 3 |
| EARED 7103 | Issues in Contemporary Education: Integrated Arts Approach | 3 |
| EARED 7109 | Introduction to Qualitative Inquiry: Writing as Research | 3 |
| EARED 7105 | Drama for Community Leadership | 3 |
| EARED 7107 | Social Action and the Arts: Critical Pedagogy and Cultural Knowledge | 3 |
| EARED 7108 | Critical Action Research | 3 |
| EARED 7106 | Multiple Literacies: Social and Political Investigation | 3 |
| EARED 6006 | Power of the Image: Media Literacy | 3 |
| EARED 7102 | Arts-Based Research | 3 |
| EARED 7003 | An Arts Approach to Diversity and Reflective Practice | 3 |
| EARED 7752 | Research in Action | 3 |
| TOTAL CREDITS | 33 | |
EARED 7104 Integrated Arts Seminar
This course explores teacher leadership by asking students to investigate specific arts disciplines through the research, design, and implementation of leadership projects within their particular school context. Students will understand the value of arts integration in classrooms and communities, will deepen their own experience of the arts, and will use the arts to assist learning and illuminate research. This course includes the critical examination of research documenting the arts integrate d into core curriculum.
EARED 7103 Issues in Contemporary Education: Integrated Arts Approach
This course offers teacher leaders in schools a chance to consider basic issues in American education, with special emphasis on the arts and their place in education. The arts will also be used to teach/learn in the course. Some background in the history of American schooling is expected from students in this course, and collaboratively, we will probe the educational issues of our day in the light of that history. The class encourages self-reflection, and research using traditional sources and on-line materials; it draws on teacher's own experiences in education as texts as well. By raising issues in contemporary education, this course lays bare the roots of politics, policies, and power in education as they affect public schools in our time.
EARED 7109 Introduction to Qualitative Inquiry: Writing as Research
This interdisciplinary course focuses on writing as a mode of qualitative inquiry. This meeting-place between interpretive qualitative research and creative writing engages students in writing processes and projects toward the articulation of an action research topic of significance to themselves, their teaching practice, and their educational communities. This course offers an introduction to arts-based writing research methods, especially narrative, creative nonfiction, poetic and autobiographical forms of inquiry.
EARED 7105 Drama for Community Leadership
This course explores the theory and practice of drama as a catalyst for positive change in schools and communities. Students will examine current theories and case studies about the use of drama for leadership in a variety of educational settings through the practice of drama structures and techniques that foster education, self-actualization and community action. The course emphasizes participatory dialogue as a path towards collaborative solutions.
EARED 7107 Social Action and the Arts: Critical Pedagogy and Cultural Knowledge
This course will explore the arts as a medium for critical inquiry. Students will investigate the relationship between the transmission of cultural knowledge and historical constructions of power and privilege in the context of educational leadership and school reform. This course will provide participants with the opportunity to translate theoretical analysis into arts integrated action research and leadership projects developed in their own school settings.
EARED 7108 Critical Action Research
This course is an introduction to critical action research as developed and used by educators in schools and classrooms. Critical action research consists of systematic inquiry by educators about teaching and learning processes for the purpose of improving professional practice with a focus on issues of justice and equity. Developing a critical perspective of the field of education requires engaging in research that consists of praxis, the connection of theory and reflection to practice.
EARED 7106 Multiple Literacies: Family, Communities, and Schools
The course is designed to involve participants in the process of exploring the creative use of some of the arts- including, visual arts, poetry and telling stories. Participants will use the arts to redefine literacy, understand their students' literacies, and to enhance students' skills. The course will involve three major elements, research, artmaking, and curriculum development all of which draw on what participants discover about the lives, families and communities of their students and themselves. We will use a critical pedagogy approach in finding and using the voices and experiences of participants and their students in shaping curriculum, in understanding the broader contexts of schooling, and in creating knowledge together. The course will also focus on the use of the arts for basic literacy and numeracy in the classroom.
EARED 6006 Power of the Image: Media Literacy
Visual images, especially in mass media, literally create our reality, yet many of us are unaware and uncritical of their power. As educators, we are surrounded by media, but we ourselves don't understand very well how to use it to educate. This course will explore the power of images, the nature of perception, and visual literacy. Students will explore how thoughts about race, religion, class and gender are created and sustained, and how media stirs emotions. Students will develop sophistication in using still, computer and video images to convey their research ideas more effectively.
EARED 7102 Arts-Based Research
This course focuses on arts-based research as practiced in the arts, education and other social sciences. We will examine using the creative process and various arts modalities to research human experience. We will explore various models of arts-based research, and students will develop research projects grounded in an arts-based method.
EARED 7003 An Arts Approach to Diversity and Reflective Practice
Following a carefully designed developmental process, building on previous courses, students will examine their own social and cultural identities, and explore how these identities impact the research process and leadership in their communities. Using a case study approach, this course will focus on Reflection in Action and bridge the thesis process, community work, and possibilities of leadership for each student.
EARED 7752 Research in Action: Online Thesis
This course is the second of a two course sequence that guides you in the design, development, and completion of your final thesis project in the Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study (CAGS) Program. The sequence, which begins with 7751, emphasizes arts integration within action research processes that focus on educational leadership and teacher generated school reform. In this course, you will complete your research design and move through the implementation of the project leading to the thesis.
