This course is designed to help prospective teachers examine their assumptions, educational beliefs, and pedagogical practices in the context of the wider social forces and educational inequalities that impinge on schooling in British Columbia, Canada and elsewhere. Discourse or social talk about public school, teachers' work, as well as, the place of particular groups of students ("ESL", working class, girls/young women, First Nations, and so forth) will be analyzed in terms of impact on implications pedagogical practice and mobilization of resources and support for schools. Discourse on public schooling involves many interested voices, whether they are outspoken, dissident, marginal, or silenced and unwelcome in the debate. The interests that construct education go beyond individual educators, students, academics and researchers (e.g. corporations, particular lobby groups, teacher unions, the state, etc.). Moreover, they are set in a broader context of social inequalities that impact on teaching and learning.

Claims about the purposes and outcomes of schooling are hardly consensual or agreed upon. Rather, they are debated quite heatedly and involve disagreements not only about the purposes and outcomes of schooling, but also about whose knowledge and visions of social justice and equality should govern the curricula of schools. Such claims and conflicts over the aims and outcomes of schooling originate from a variety of individuals, groups, and organizations including governments, teacher organizations, parent groups, religious and cultural groups, student groups, school boards, and various social movements. This course will focus on claims made about the relationship among teachers, students, and schools with particular emphasis given to social divisions and oppressions by gender, class, "race" and sexuality--particularly with respect to the experiences of "ESL", First Nations, and lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans-gendered students. Issues of multiculturalism/antiracism, heterosexism, sexism, ageism, English as a second language, and classism will be central to our examination of the wider social context of education. Creating classroom learning environments/spaces and practices that are democratically inclusive and challenging learning environment will be the goal of this and all other 314 sections.

Educators need to understand the wider forces influencing educational practice, theory and policy in order to reflect critically on the interests underlying claims made about schools, teachers and particular groups of students since such claims also impact greatly how resources and opportunities are distributed among and between schools and social groups. They also deeply affect whether and how teaching as a profession and the work of teachers are valued and rewarded in the larger society. The course aims to enhance in prospective educators, as well as to sharpen in those of who have been members for some time, the conceptual background and language to evaluate the on-going discourse about the purposes, means, and ends of education in order to communicate effectively and persuasively.

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