Ed Admin vs. Ed Foundations and Other Things...

Recently, I’ve been spending my lunch breaks at work at the campus bookstore, perusing the texts that are trickling in for the fall. I must say, my heart skipped more than just a few beats when I saw the texts out for some courses in the educational foundations department. So, confession: I probably do belong in the EDEF department more than I belong in the EDEA department. I do enjoy my courses and my professors, but I think my academic interests lie more in the foundations of, the philosophy of, and the social contexts of education more than within education administration. –Had I really put more thought into it, I probably would have concluded that I belonged in the EDEF department with a focus in the social & cultural contexts of education, and taking my electives in higher education administration.

From the “credits” perspective, I’m half-way through the EDEA program – and I know almost all the EDEA professors. It hardly makes sense to switch departments. –And I could take some classes in EDEF…I just feel that my lack of time for classes makes it incredibly difficult for me to do this!

Here are the courses I’m drooling over:

EDEF 685 – International Development Education
Texts:
Expanding the Boundaries of Transformative Learning
Transformative Learning

EDEF 698 – Advanced Topics: Feminist Studies in Education
Texts:
Feeling Power: Emotions and Education
World, Class, Women: Global Literature, Education, and Feminism

EDEF 762 – Seminar on the Social & Cultural Contexts of Education
Texts:
Durkheim on Morality and Society
Durkheim – The rules of Sociological Method
Das Kapital
The Great Transformation
(I'd really love the chance to read more Durkheim...*sigh*)

It’s okay. Perhaps I’ll have more of a chance to foray into these topics when I go for my PhD. ☺

In the meantime, I picked up the texts for the intro course to my program (go figure that I’m taking it now that I’m half way done…). I also did the smart thing and emailed the professor for the syllabus! I’m planning to squish the course reading (and perhaps some of the writing, at least the journaling) into my summer reading to make my fall more manageable.

Speaking of summer reading, I’m half-way through “This Book is Not Required." It’s a great, practical read that I think would be beneficial to all college students – and honestly, everyone. Discussion on this book will be forthcoming. I’ve also got some more books on their way (I was hoping they’d arrive today but I’ll have to wait until Monday).

An idea popped into my head while at the bookstore today – to read several books around a central theme from the perspectives of different subjects, and discuss the common threads or subject-specific insights they may offer. Since flipping through Schwartz’s “The Paradox of Choice” and thinking – “Hey, I’m not that burdened by choice…” the more I came to realize that, “Hello, yeah, you are!” From choosing my major, to my career, to where I’ll go to grad school, to what I’ll eat for dinner and even to which book I’m going to read next! Isn’t it odd that I actually feel stress in choosing which book I am going to read next for fun??? And in the big picture of it all, my major didn’t really matter so much, and which book I’ll read next is irrelevant…so why do I feel stress in making that decision? Anyhow, that will be the theme – choices/decisions. The books I’ve selected are:
The Paradox of Choice (Barry Schwartz) - sociology
Blink (Malcolm Gladwell) - psychology
Nudge (Richard Thaler) - economics
Sway (Ori Brafman) – business/marketing

I may not read all four of them, but I will be choosing at least 2, likely 3 of these books for this fun little project.