Education Studies For Non-Majors and New Students

Many Education Studies courses do not have prerequisites and are open to all students. Courses in the Program offer students the space to reflect on their own educational journeys and their places in the wider landscape of educational history, politics, and sociology. Education Studies courses prompt students to wrestle with foundational questions about equity, diversity, opportunity, democracy, identity, language, and cognition. How and why have ideas about the purpose of education evolved over time? What factors have shaped schools and school systems, from preschool to the university itself? How has education influenced other foundational social institutions, including the state, labor markets, housing markets, immigration policies, the family, the media, and the criminal justice system? How have educational processes, practices and institutions served as sites for the production of oppression, tools for liberation, and the bases of individual and collective identities? What have researchers learned about teaching and learning and how has this research informed educational practice and social outcomes?  We welcome students from across the College who are interested in these topics. 

Students considering majoring in Education Studies should read the About the Major page and are encouraged to speak with the program chair. Many students choose to double major in Education Studies and a disciplinary major like Math, History, or Sociology. Students can apply courses taken for another major and courses taken outside of the Education Studies Program, in other Amherst departments and across the Five Colleges, to an Education Studies major.