Program Overview

The Social Justice Education concentration is a graduate program that offers theory, research, and exploration of social justice topics, curricular design and facilitation skills, with practicum opportunities for supervised teaching in a variety of Social Justice Education classroom settings.  This Certificate makes available selected components of the overall Social Justice Education program for graduate students matriculated in university graduate programs and who want to develop foundational knowledge, and curricular and facilitative skills in Social Justice Education.

This is a flexible five-course (15 credit) program, with requirements and electives, focusing on the foundational and curricular knowledge and pedagogical skills needed for effective diversity teaching. This Certificate has two tracks: Track A is designed for graduate students teaching undergraduate diversity or social justice courses on campus and/or focused on higher education as their professional direction; Track B is designed for graduate students preparing for social justice teaching in schools or related venues (i.e., after-school programs) and/or focused on youth as their professional direction.

Requirements
Admission: Available primarily, but not exclusively, to matriculated graduate students by application to the program.
Completion: The Certificate consists of five courses (15 credits) as follows:

  • Two core Social Justice Education courses from within the Social Justice Education concentration.
  • Two electives selected from a list of Social Justice Education, College of Education, and cross-campus content courses that deal with diversity and social justice academic content or departmentally-specific practica. Note that these two electives can overlap with home department degree requirements if those courses have a social justice emphasis.
  • Social Justice Education teaching practicum (undergraduates on campus or students in schools or related venues). In the practicum, graduate students will apply their social justice and diversity content knowledge and pedagogical skills to design and facilitate undergraduate Social Justice Education weekend seminars, or schools-related diversity/social justice opportunities.

For further information, contact: Maurianne Adams, adams@educ.umass.edu or go to www.umass.edu/sje/certificate.html.

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