Urban Education

Also see Department Website:
http://web.gc.cuny.edu/urbaneducation/

The Ph.D. Program in Urban Education aims to provide the research base needed to help solve the urgent problems of urban education. Its primary research focus is the study of urban education as an interdependent system of social institutions across many scales of organization: the family and neighborhood community; classrooms, schools, and partner institutions; school districts and larger-scale political and economic institutions.

The course of study emphasizes the interdependence of reasoning about curricular and instructional issues and reasoning about policy issues, as well as the connections between critical reflexive research methodology and sophisticated disciplinary and epistemological understanding.

Five core courses are required: The Structure of Social Knowledge; Historical Contexts of Urban Education; Logics of Inquiry; Pedagogy and the Urban Classroom; and Educational Policy. First-year students are required to take a two-semester, one-credit core colloquium seminar in which they reflect on their experience with urban education and are introduced to the logic and expectations of the program as a whole, the research interests of the faculty, and the process of conceptualizing, carrying out, and writing up research on the scale of a Ph.D. dissertation.

Studies Specializations
Students are required to complete course work in one of three studies specializations: Arts, Humanities, and Social Studies in Urban Education; Science, Mathematics, and Technology in Urban Education; or Urban Education Policy Studies. They also take advanced research methods courses and interdisciplinary program seminars and may select relevant elective courses offered by other doctoral programs. Students are guided in postcore course work by a Studies Committee with expertise in their area of concentration to ensure that they achieve a high level of disciplinary sophistication within at least one professional specialization.