Institutes and Off-Campus or External Programs (Cohorts)

Curriculum Studies: Kootenays

Practitioner Inquiry and Place Conscious Pedagogies

A part-time cohort program for working professionals and teachers in the West Kootenays.

This unique MEd in Curriculum Studies, with a focus on Practitioner Inquiry and Place-Conscious Pedagogies, takes into account a diversity of perspectives, pedagogies, and conceptions of curriculum.

The cohort will explore the various connections between place-conscious learning, rurality, curriculum, school and community engagement, and practitioner inquiry as they relate to a broad range of educational contexts.

This 30-credit graduate cohort offers students opportunities to examine, theoretically and experientially, the multiple and complex relations between teaching, learning, place, and the potential realization of social justice in local contexts.

• Practitioner Inquiry attends to the generativity that can come from educators inquiring into the contexts within which they teach and learn. Taking up pedagogy and curriculum as participatory, responsive, co-created and as an ethical act of inquiry, educators can develop leadership capacities within themselves and their communities.
• Place-Consciousness is an informed and critical perspective on the relationships between people and the places they inhabit. Place-conscious education challenges learners to consider where they are, how they got here, and to examine the tensions that exist between different cultural groups in particular communities over time. Seen in this light, places provide a local focus for socioecological experiences and inquiry.
• Pedagogy focuses on the ways that educators engage with learners, and the philosophical connections between intentions, epistemologies, practices, and learners.

Home Economics (HEE5)

This online graduate program delves into key aspects of Home Economics curriculum with connections to Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies (ADST) curriculum, Textile Arts, and Culinary Arts. The program has been designed for school and community educators who teach in areas such as food and nutrition, textiles, family studies, health, human ecology, consumer studies or related projects such as food security or school gardens.

The underlying themes of this program include:

• interdisciplinary inquiry
• human-environment interactions
• local and global communities
• ecological sustainability
• researching practice
• social responsibility

This program is ideal for:

• Teachers/educators in both school and community contexts
• Professionals working in health and nutrition, food studies, fashion and textiles, family studies, and consumer science
• Professionals working in NGOs

Increase your qualifications in home economics education and enhance your ability to conduct useful teaching and learning activities, as follows:

1. Critically analyze dominant and alternative theories of learning and teaching in Transformative Practice, Human Ecology and Everyday Life.
2. Analyze different approaches to curriculum development and implementation and their implications for programs based on ecology and issues of daily life.
3. Place curriculum and pedagogy for Human Ecology and Everyday Life in historical context, understanding the social, political, economic, and cultural factors that direct past, present, and future decision making.
4. Use a stance of inquiry toward your professional practice as an educator in a variety of settings.

Mathematics Education

The study of innovative strategies for teaching and learning Mathematics with/in Community

This MEd in Mathematics Education is a unique fully online graduate program that explores approaches for constructing and living mathematics curriculum that is responsive to place/land and connected to community.

The program offers opportunities to study teaching and learning mathematics in diverse community contexts including:

• Teaching and learning gardens
• Cultural spaces
• Urban, rural and Indigenous communities
• Artistic performances
• Inside and outside school classrooms
• Family settings
• Public spaces such as libraries, malls, community centres
• Issues important to communities such as climate change, poverty, and social justice

Applications are welcome from a wide range of students including early childhood educators, elementary school teachers, secondary and post-secondary school teachers, and educators keen to explore creative and innovative contexts to support and inspire children and youth in mathematical inquiry in community.

Our MEd in Math Education offers students opportunities to:

• Explore strategies, theories, and approaches for inspiring mathematical wonder in students of all ages from young children to youth to adults.
• Engage in critical analysis of mathematics education and how mathematics can be used to interpret and change the world
• Design and critique community contexts that have potential to evoke mathematical curiosity (e.g. public spaces such as libraries, malls, teaching and learning gardens).
• Examine research and theories on children’s mathematical problem solving and thinking across diverse contexts
• Engage in critical analysis on the role mathematics plays in framing social issues (such as inequitable access to clean drinking water across communities) and on ways of being moved to action
• Examine theories and practices exploring how mathematics might be experienced beyond the classroom as container
• Develop skills and knowledge in initiating, sustaining, and working within community for mathematics education.

Media & Technology Studies Education

Explore the field of applied design and its relationship to learning technology in education.

Graduate programs (MEd, MA) in MTSE focus on learning, research, and teaching in, through, and about media and technology. This includes applications and design of digital and physical processes and works as well as their economics, history, philosophy, and psychology. This also includes implications of how and why mediated and technological works are processed, coded, made, used, and recycled. Learning, research, and teaching in MTSE focus generally on interactions among media, technology, culture, nature, and people. Some of the substantive specializations in MTSE are educational media, technology, and design, advanced learning technologies, media studies, D&T, ecodesign, HCI, ICT, STEM, and STS.

This masters program is ideal for teachers specializing in computer science, ICT, and technology education, as well as more generally teachers within the Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies (ADST) cluster in BC schools.

Connections to BC Provincial Initiatives

Applied learning has become an integral part of all of British Columbia’s curricula. Through the newly designed Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies (ADST) curriculum students are offered several options to develop the ability to design, make, acquire, and apply skills and technologies key for their engagement as citizens of the future.

The updated ADST curriculum encompasses both the development of a foundational mindset in design thinking and making, and curricular competencies (applied design, applied skills, and applied technologies) both integrated within subject domains in the early years, to discrete courses through the middle and secondary years.

Online or Blended Delivery

All core and required courses are offered online. Approved electives may be taken online or face-to-face at UBC or other universities subject to the terms of the Western Deans’ Agreement or Graduate Exchange Agreement.

Museum Education

The study of education that occurs in museums and informal learning contexts

The Master of Museum Education is a unique graduate degree program focusing on the study of education and learning that occurs in museums and other informal learning contexts (such as, art galleries, science centres, parks, historic sites, etc.). This program draws together Museum professionals, educators and those with an interest in using the community to support teaching and learning to further their thinking and scholarship around museums as sites of education and learning.

As museums contemplate new roles within society it will be incumbent upon museum professionals, and particularly museum educators, to become catalysts for different ways of thinking about the educational roles and potentials of museums and other informal learning sites, teaching and learning in museum settings as well as exploring new relationships between museums and the broader community.

This program will provide the necessary skills and knowledge for careers as educators in informal settings such as museums, locally and globally, and to support classroom-based teachers in expanding their use of the community as a learning site. Furthermore, it is ideally suited for currently practicing museum professionals who seek recognized graduate-level qualifications and high-level professional development to progress their careers. The program model is one that recognizes the need for contextualizing museum education curriculum in both home country context (which has its own unique social and political context) and in the Canadian cultural context of museum education, in which practices may be conceptualized in other beneficial ways to that of the student’s own country of origin. The end result is graduates that are then better able to influence the systems in their own countries with strengthened capacities to introduce beneficial reforms around museum education.
Upon completing the MMEd degree, students will be able to:

• Critically analyze dominant and alternative theories and discourses of learning and teaching in informal settings
• Identify the influences of multiple perspectives (i.e., Local, Aboriginal, International) in facilitating learning experiences in/within museums and communities
• Better understand to how to affect change (i.e., cognitive, affective, emotional, behavioural) among the diversity of audiences museums and cultural institutions server
• Develop learning opportunities to integrate learning within classrooms, and learning in informal settings such as museums and other informal learning sites
• Develop tools to implement and sustain educational programs outside the traditional classroom
• Develop skills and knowledge to understand and address the increasing complexities of issues facing informal learning settings
• Evaluate the potential for working with a variety of learning communities
• Analyze different approaches to teaching and program development, settings, and perspectives

Science Education

Fully online graduate program offered by leading UBC Science Education Professors

The Master of Education in Science Education is ideal for educators with a background or interest in science. This includes:

• Secondary and elementary science teachers
• Post-secondary science instructors
• Science educators in informal settings
• Any educator with an interest in science education

This graduate program offers students the opportunity to pursue a wide range of research and professional interests in the field of STEM education, with the emphasis on science education.

Through the pursuit of student individual and collective interests, graduate students will develop and enhance their knowledge and practice of science education. Graduate students will be equipped to advance the quality of education and assume leadership roles in the field.

Upon completing the MEd in Science Education degree, students will be able to:

• Critically analyze dominant and alternative theories and discourses of science learning and teaching in formal and informal learning environments
• Identify the influences of multiple perspectives (i.e., Local, Aboriginal, International) in facilitating science learning experiences in formal and informal learning environments
• Better understand how to affect change (i.e., cognitive, affective, emotional, and behavioural) among the diversity of students and learning environments
• Develop learning opportunities for integrating modern technologies in various science learning environments
• Develop tools to implement and sustain diverse science educational programs
• Develop skills and knowledge to understand and address the increasing complexities of issues for modern science educators
• Evaluate the potential for science educators working with a variety of learning communities
• Analyze different approaches to science teaching and program development, settings, and perspectives

Social Studies Education

Curriculum, Historical Inquiry, & Pedagogy (CHiP)

The program delves into key aspects of social studies curricula with connections to historical thinking, historical consciousness, visual culture, anti-oppressive and anti-racism education, gender studies, moral education, and the history and politics of curriculum.

As educators in diverse contexts, the students in this program are responsible for being and creating active citizens who work for the betterment of humanity. Issues of equity, diversity, and social justice are central to the ChiP cohort and serve as foundational lenses for interrogating social studies curriculum and pedagogy.

The cohort-based model invites students to work through the program in a collaborative community of practice. Students in this program will construct strong, foundational knowledge about teaching and learning in social studies. Building on that base, they will investigate the ways in which inquiry, inter-culturalism, and 21st century teaching and learning are central to social studies education.

Program Goals and Objectives

Through the program, students will consider theories, principles, and practices in social studies education related to:

• Critical analysis of dominant and alternative theories of learning, teaching, and assessment in Social Studies,
• Improvement of practice through the study of educational theory, philosophy, and practice in Social Studies,
• Analysis of different approaches to curriculum development and implementation and their impact on social studies teaching and learning,
• The place of curriculum and pedagogy for social studies education in historical context, understanding the social, political, economic, and cultural factors that direct past, present, and future decision making, and
• Using an inquiry stance toward your professional practice as an educator in a variety of settings.

Additionally, students will continually reflect on what they are learning and consider how it can help them understand the aims and purposes underlying social studies curricula in their contexts. This knowledge can then be used to inform new practices in their educational contexts.