LEARNING, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY
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Contact: Graduate Program Director
Application Deadlines:
For domestic classified status, the deadline is approximately a month before the start of classes (Definite dates are on the application itself). International students, please see the FAQs #16 for your deadline. NOTE: If you are a new graduate student and you intend to apply for a Competitive Graduate Award (CGA), the deadline for having all of your application materials turned in moves up to January 15th. If you apply for the CGA but your SIUE application is incomplete, your application for the Competitive Graduate Award will be removed from consideration.
MASTER OF SCIENCE IN EDUCATION
The Department of Educational Leadership offers a program of study leading to the Master of Science in Education degree with a major in Learning, Culture, and Society. The degree is intended to prepare individuals to be culturally responsive educators who understand how social and psychological factors impact classroom, school, and community. The program provides an in-depth understanding of the social, cultural, psychological, historical, and philosophical foundations of education with the goal of improving the effectiveness of classroom teachers, especially as they work with an increasingly diverse student population in both urban and rural settings. The program is interdisciplinary, drawing on foundational, instructional, and liberal arts courses as they relate to culturally responsive teaching. Areas of emphasis within the program include the following: Cultural Diversity, Assessment, and English as a Second Language. Courses within each of these areas of emphasis are taken in multiple departments across the university. Students in the English as a Second Language emphasis can work toward earning the Illinois State Board of Education’s ESL or bilingual approval. (All six of the course options for the ESL emphasis count toward state ESL approval and four of the six count toward bilingual approval.)
ADMISSION
The general requirements for admission to the graduate program in Learning, Culture, and Society are a bachelor’s degree and a grade point average of 3.0 or above (A=4.0) during their last two years of undergraduate work. (The undergraduate GPA requirement may be waived for students who have received in more recent graduate course work a GPA that demonstrates potential for success.) Applicants are also required to submit a list of professional experiences and a written statement. An interview may also be requested. Applicants may arrange for an appeal interview with the Admissions Committee if admission is denied.
PROGRAM OF STUDY
Thirty semester hours of graduate credit are required for Master of Science in Education degree with a major in Learning, Culture, and Society. Requirements are as follows:
General professional core (12 hours):
EPFR 501 (Research Methods in Education)
EPFR 515 (Advanced Educational Psychology)
EPFR 520 (Analysis of Educational Issues: Philosophic-historic Perspectives)
EPFR 521 (Analysis of Educational Issues: Socio-cultural Perspectives)
School of Education required courses (6 credit hours) (select 2):
CI 561/562 (The Elementary School Curriculum/The Secondary School Curriculum)
CI 471 (Teaching in the Multicultural Classroom)
CI 508 (Recent Issues and Trends: Schooling and Popular Culture)
Area of emphasis (9 credit hours) selected from courses in one of the following areas - Cultural Diversity, Assessment, and English as a Second Language, as follows:
Cultural Diversity (9 credit hours) (select 3)
ENG 446 (Studies in African-American Literature)
ENG 526 (Studies in African-American Texts)
ENG 570 (Teaching African-American Oral and Written Literature)
ENG 416 (Language and Society)
ENG 478 (Studies in Women, Language and Literature)
ENG 578 (Women, Language, and Pedagogy)
ENG 581 (Topics in Teaching English) when appropriate, must be approved by advisor
HIST 423b (Native Americans from 1840 to the Present)
HIST 440 (Women in American Social History)
HIST 442 (The Black Urban Experience)
HIST 460 (History of Mexico)
SOC 444 (Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the Workplace)
SOC 502 (Seminar in Intergroup Relations)
SOC 542 (Seminar in Gender and Gender Inequality)
SOC 590 (Special Topics) (when appropriate, must be approved by advisor)
SPC 511 (Seminar in Intercultural Communication)
SPC 509 (Special Topics in Communication Theory and Research) (when appropriate, must be approved by advisor)
GEOG 500 (Seminar in Cultural Geography)
GEOG 406 (Political Geography)
GEOG 400 (Urban Geography)
SOCW 517 (Diversity)
Assessment (9 credit hours) (select 3):
SPE 511 (Individualized Educational Assessment)
PSYC 421 (Psychological Tests and Measurement)
ENG 472 (Assessment and Testing in ESL)
KIN 525 (Principles of Assessment in Special Physical Education)
CI 571 (Literacy Diagnostics: Assessment and Instruction)
English as a Second Language (9 credit hours) (select 3):
ENG 400 (Principles of Linguistics)
ENG 409 (Syntactic Analysis)
ENG 416 (Language and Society)
ENG 468 (Second Language Acquisition)
ENG 470 (Methods and Materials for K-12 ESL Teaching)
ENG 472 (Assessment and Testing in ESL)
Final project (EPFR 575) (3 credit hours). The final project may be either an action research project (Boyer’s “scholarship of application”) or a traditional research project (Boyer’s “scholarship of discovery”) (Boyer, 1990, pp. 16-23). An action research project is a scholarly research study that involves working on a problem with practical applications for the student’s classroom, school, district, or community. A traditional research project is an original research project that does not necessarily involve practical applications for the student.
Within the first semester of study, the student must select a graduate faculty member as project chairperson for the project committee. The chairperson will advise the student on coursework and research. Within the first year of study, the student must select two additional graduate faculty members to complete their project committee. The committee should consist of faculty with expertise or interests that are appropriate to the student’s academic background, goals, and interests. The committee chair and one of the other committee members must be from the Department of Educational Leadership. The third committee member may be from outside the department and from outside the SOE. The committee and the student will develop a research project outline and will determine before the work begins whether the project will be “scholarship of application” or “scholarship of discovery.” The project is then approved for initiation and supervised by the committee chairperson.
EXIT REQUIREMENTS
Candidates must submit a project proposal for approval by a project committee, carry out the proposed project, submit a written report, and complete an oral defense of their project.