Thematic Inquiry
The Thematic Inquiry course will be a single four-credit course. Whether it is officially team-taught or not, it will involve the strategic participation of faculty members, community members, and alumni working in cities and schools broadly defined.
The Thematic Inquiry course will be arranged into modules that address historical, philosophical,
sociological, and psychological inquiry, respectively, through a focus on major “strands” related to life and learning in “the city.” Each module will integrate opportunities for creative, quantitative, and critical analysis.
The content of the modules – and perhaps the modules themselves, to some extent – will shift to some degree each time the course is taught and contingent upon the expertise and interests of the instructor(s)teaching it. For example, in one semester, modules might be organized as follows: health and human services in the city; education in the city; art and design in the city; economics in the city; and science in the city. In each module, students would explore key issues and innovations, particularly (and comparatively) those that emerge from the New London-area context, its conditions and dynamics, and its efforts toward transformative change. In addition, each module would engage students around readings from various disciplinary perspectives and would present opportunities to interact with guests/speakers who bring different vantage points, backgrounds, and experiences.
Altogether this would provide students the chance to explore how questions related to any
module(s)/strand(s) take shape differentially across disciplines and how methods of inquiry and action likewise shift; at the same time, students would be developing a sense of what different disciplines and approaches offer, alone and together, when it comes to understanding a particular context and addressing a particular issue as it relates to urban and educational studies.
These modules, in turn, would yield to a final module wherein students would have the opportunity to explore topics/issues of their own choosing, read around them (i.e., from different disciplinary perspectives and attending to different kinds of work), and refine their animating questions accordingly.
Required Course
Curricular Itinerary Courses
Course List
Suggested Global-Local Engagement
A wide range of study away opportunities in/around urban centers (whether U.S.-based or international) would be relevant to students in the Cities and Schools Pathway. Students would work with the Pathway coordinator and Office of Study Away to determine the best fit, taking into account academic interests, area studies, language competencies, long-term/post-graduate aspirations, and the intended learning outcomes of this Pathway (see below). A few examples, all of which have been pursued at one point or another by students at Connecticut College, are included below:
• The School for International Training’s (SIT) program Chile: Comparative Education and Social Change, within which students study educational policies, practices, and problematics in Chile and Argentina.
• The Danish Institute for Study’s (DIS) program Child Development and Diversity in Denmark, within which students study Scandinavian approaches to child development, including some of those most heralded for their progressive, pro-child pedagogies and professionalized teaching force.
• The Center for Cross Cultural Studies (CCCS) program Education and Spanish Studies in Seville, Spain, wherein students study language and pedagogy, while also participating in a structured practicum experience in local schools.
• The IES program Berlin Metropolitan Studies, which is not officially approved at Connecticut College; however, it would be a great consideration, given prior students’ experiences, and its targeted coursework in Urban Studies – in fields such as sociology, Gender and Women’s Studies, and politics.
• Connecticut College’s Study Away Teach Away (SATA) program in Cuba and Mexico, within which students study a broadly conceived understanding of revolution from two very different ideological perspectives, with a focus on how the different organizational structures in question operate.
• The SIT Study Abroad program India: Public Health, Gender and Community Action, in New Delhi, which “explores links between public health, policy advocacy, and community in India, with a focus on marginalized and vulnerable populations.”
Depending on their areas of focus in and beyond Cities and Schools, internships could occur in K-12 schools, as well as early childhood and/or eldercare settings; community organizations that address literacy, learning, adult or youth development, education advocacy, and so on; government offices, including those of elected officials at all levels of the system (i.e., local, state, federal); professional bodies representing various stakeholders, including city residents, educators, counselors, parents, students, workers, etc.; entities that work on behalf of the rights of various interest groups, such as youth with designated disabilities, undocumented immigrants, bi-/multi-lingual speakers, etc. The options are nearly endless. However, the options would differ somewhat depending upon whether students were engaged in internships during the semester, when they typically need to be in close proximity to New London, or during summers (or semesters away), when internships could take place in a wider array of spaces and structural arrangements.
Ideally, community-based learning experiences would complement and build on one another in ways that are mutually beneficial for college students moving through the Pathway and for the broader community (i.e., intentionally sequenced experience that build students’ knowledge in ways that positively impact work in/with the community, rather than haphazard and/or fractured experiences that do not build to deeper/broader understandings and therefore require undue labor on the part of community partners). How precisely these experiences should be structured and linked to one another depends upon the learning goals of the courses within which the community-based learning experiences are embedded, in conversation with the broader learning goals of the Pathway writ large.
Required Course
Senior Reflection
Required Course