Bard, A Place to Think - Master of Arts in Teaching

Areas of Study

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The 12- or 24-month cycles of integrated graduate courses and field experiences offered to one-year and two-year students are intensive programs that emphasize deep study in a discipline and a core set of education courses that build a model of teaching as clinical practice.

The 12- or 24-month cycles of integrated graduate courses and field experiences offered to one-year and two-year students are intensive programs that emphasize deep study in a discipline and a core set of education courses that build a model of teaching as clinical practice.

There are no course electives, and the successful completion of all courses is required for graduation and New York and/or California State teacher certification.

Please note that the placement and offering of courses is subject to change.

Core Education Courses

The MAT Program's core education courses provide the basis for thinking about teaching and learning, in the contexts of theory, history, research, and practices related to cognition, motivation, literacy acquisition, the social/cultural dynamics of the classroom, the role of identity in learning, curriculum/instructional design, and policy and educational change.

Integrating knowledge gained from these courses with the challenges of learning in the academic discipline to develop an effective understanding of classroom teaching is the goal of study, experiences in the classroom, and ongoing reflection.

• Education 502. Schooling in the 21st Century: A Learner Perspective
  Incorporating practices developed by the Institute for Writing and Thinking, this one-week writing seminar introduces students to an alternative pedagogical model in which informal writing practices create a culture of learning that stimulates inquiry, focused reflection, and close collaboration among learners. The course acquaints students with the kinds of reflective practice that will characterize and, eventually, shape their own teaching practices. Students read seminal papers and excerpts on various issues in education including race, gender, class, standardized testing, tracking, block scheduling, national and state standards, teacher education, alternative schools, and current policy trends. 1 credit. Students complete two of the three courses described below based on availability and student interests and background.
• Education 512. Identity, Culture, and the Classroom
  In this course, students consider what it means for them to teach-and for adolescents to learn-in the context of contemporary American society. The course focuses on identity development and how it is influenced by cultural power dynamics around such factors as race, gender, sexual orientation, class, ability, ethnicity, and language. Students begin by exploring the concept of identity in broad terms, drawing on Erikson's developmental model as well as numerous contemporary writings. The remainder of the course focuses on the ways in which specific identity-related issues affect adolescents' school experiences. Students investigate research topics including the black/white test score gap and the school-based risks faced by sexual minority students, as well as the work of researcher/theorists Gilligan, Ogbu, Steele, Tatum, and others. The purpose of the course is to move students toward a deeper understanding of the ways identity, culture, and schooling intersect so that they can develop a repertoire of reflective, analytical, and practical strategies to use in their ongoing work as teachers. 3 credits.
• Education 513. Historical and Social Contexts of Teaching and Learning
  The instructional relationship that unites teacher, student, and subject matter is typically constrained by powerful socially defined educational institutions. Tracing the 20th-century evolution of American education, this course explores how cycles of educational theory and reform, institutionalized schooling practices, and deeply rooted cultural assumptions present both resources for and obstacles to innovative teaching. Examining the emergence and legacy of progressive education as a turn-of-the-century response to industrialization, migration, urbanization, and bureaucratization, students analyze three enduring and contentious questions: What purposes does schooling serve in a democratic society? In what ways should human difference shape pedagogy? Why does innovative, effective teaching remain rare? The course employs historical, sociological, empirical, and theoretical tools to interrogate the ways that a persistent grammar of schooling frames the unique and complex work of classroom teachers. 3 credits.
• Education 514. Issues in Teaching and Learning
  This course explores the thinking of some of the major early 20th-century theorists in learning and investigates how this thinking has influenced the development of contemporary learning theories. Both the earlier and the later perspectives are examined regarding assumptions, approaches, conclusions, and implications for learning and instruction. Constructivist and social development theories are examined as the basis of a number of learning theories developed over the past 30 to 40 years. This analysis supports students in examining and questioning their own assumptions about education and learning; in better understanding the basis of culturally prevalent views; and in exploring the conversation between theory, research, and practice. This critical interaction becomes increasingly relevant as students anticipate their initial field experiences as teachers. 3 credits.
• Education 522. Learning and Teaching in the Disciplines
  This course emphasizes curriculum design and implementation by looking at how assessment protocols contribute to learning and answer essential questions about teaching practices. The course asks the question "What is it we teach in our subject area and how should we teach it?" Answering these questions prepares students for the work of instruction and planning as teachers in the public schools. Readings cover current educational research and curriculum theory; research focuses on the ways that the skills and literacies of a particular discipline develop in the classroom setting. 3 credits.
• Education 524. Language, Literacy, and the Adolescent Learner
  Secondary school teachers have become increasingly aware of a bifurcation between the sociocultural discourse practices of adolescents and the academic discourse practices adolescents are expected to master in school. This course begins with the question "What is literacy?" and connects the research in theoretical models of literacy development with applied practices in reading, writing, and technology that are particularly relevant to learning in the disciplines. 3 credits.
• Education 532. Teaching as Reflective Practice I
  A forum for linking educational literature and research to experiences in the field, this course addresses the question "How do we learn from our teaching?" Previous work in instructional planning and assessment is put into practice as students develop a plan for the formative evaluation of their work in the schools. Students are asked to address issues in adolescent learning, literacy, language acquisition, and individual learners' needs within the context of teaching their discipline. Each student creates a portfolio that includes short response papers linking related readings to classroom experiences, lesson plans, examples of assessment strategies, samples of students' classroom work, and a reflective narrative drawn from the entries made in his or her teaching journal during the winter and spring quarter teaching practicums. For one-year students, this course carries over from the winter to the spring quarters. 3 credits.
• Education 542. Teaching as Reflective Practice II
  Previous work in instructional planning and assessment is put into practice in this course, which provides a forum for linking educational literature with research in the field as students begin their second teaching experience in the public schools. As they develop a plan for a formative evaluation of their classroom teaching, students have a critical opportunity to reflect on their work as teachers. Each student's evaluation plan addresses issues in adolescent learning, literacy, language acquisition, and individual learner needs within the context of teaching his or her discipline. Students in this course are expected to build on and extend the work begun in ED 532. 3 credits.

Biology

The MAT Program's biology curriculum requires students to engage in the kinds of thinking that characterize professional work in the field. Too often, the teaching of biology in secondary schools and undergraduate programs divides the subject into units of study that obscure the integration across disciplinary perspectives, though it is this very integration that characterizes the future of biology in the 21st century. In this curriculum, students are challenged to extend their studies through courses and research that demand the integration of disciplinary perspectives through a focus on essential questions and problems.

The Discipline

• Biology 512 I/II. Evolution in Communities
  The evolution of communities underlies major issues in biology today, including control of infectious disease, conservation of habitats, management of agroecosystems and charting rationale responses to climate change. The mechanisms that drive evolutionary change are well understood, but how they play out in the complex interactions of a community are not. This course focuses on the conceptual and methodological challenges in this young field, and use insects in temperate forest and agroecosystems as models. It draws on primary literature in ecology, evolution, and genetics. Lab and field work center on students developing a prospectus for research using a model insect from these ecosystems. 6 credits total.
• Biology 522 I/II. Topics in Biology: Parasitology, Physiology and Public Health
  Despite advances in medicine, infectious disease remains a chief cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide. Understanding the challenges that these diseases pose for the global community requires a working knowledge of mammalian physiology, biodiversity of infectious agents, epidemiology, and the evolution and ecology of parasites. To develop this knowledge base, students research and present relevant topics for class discussion and comment. This class focuses on developing student skills as self-directed learners. As in the previous lab, applied work in this course centers on experimental design and the development of research projects that are transferable to the middle and high school classroom. 6 credits total.
• Biology 532. Academic Research Project
  Science teachers are expected to train their students to "think like a scientist." Scientists learn to think the way they do by apprenticing with more experienced practitioners. The academic research project is the primary activity by which MAT students develop the skills to become that experienced practitioner. The aim is to develop a research agenda, conduct the initial work, and refine that agenda for further investigations once students are in the classroom working with their own apprentice learners. For the project, students are required to:

  • Write a prospective plan of work demonstrating a deep understanding of their chosen question, its context and importance, and detailing an experimental design
  • Conduct the proposed experiments
  • Analyze and interpret their data
  • Write a report demonstrating that the above requirements have been met and present it for discussion by MAT biology students and faculty 6 credits total.

Discipline and Pedagogy

• Biology 513. Teaching Science: The Learner as Individual, A Field Experience
  Students spend one morning per week in a local summer school program. This introduction to the public schools provides MAT students with opportunities to work with students one-on-one or in small groups in a tutorial mode. As a first experience with the public schools, graduate students are involved with diagnostic approaches to teaching, focusing on individuals with various kinds of recognized academic needs. These experiences provide real contexts for inquiry and study in the summer teaching strand. Required noncredit course.
• Biology 516. Biology Education: Teaching/Lab Strand
  This course embraces the MAT Program's vision of educational practice in which MAT students are asked to apply their learning experiences and knowledge as biologists, and their studies and experiences in education, to questions about biology teaching. In this course students begin to develop models of teaching and learning for public school classrooms that build scientific understanding and knowledge by engaging public school students in scientific thinking. Biological inquiry requires a broad view. It is not enough to understand one part of a larger system. Increasingly complex models are necessary to resolve important problems and answer essential questions in the sciences. In what ways might problem sets serve as a model for instruction in the public schools? How can a broad field like biology be taught adequately in a single academic year? What does "adequately" mean, in this context? Are inquiry-based models of education equal to the task? Questions about epistemologies, course coverage, and effective means of instruction lead students to explore models of instruction and create new models for learning. In what ways does the structure of the graduate courses in biology differ from the structure of the New York State biology curriculum, "The Living Environment"? How do state standards mesh with the kinds of science learning emphasized in MAT graduate biology courses? What aspects of these graduate courses might be applied to a possible modification of the public school curriculum, and what purposes would be served by such a modification? In what ways can public school classroom laboratory experiences be structured to require the kinds of synthesis across disciplines that are implicit to the work of biologists? These and similar questions are a focus for this lab-strand inquiry as students look closely at what it means to learn biology from the different perspectives of college-level, secondary school, and middle school learning. Required noncredit course.
• Biology 518. Classroom Research Project
  This independent-study course requires students to become teacher-researchers, examining the effects of particular practices or designs on student learning in the context of their particular field of study. Review of the pertinent literature, research design and implementation, analysis of data, and conclusions leading to further iterations build a practice of inquiry and reflection that are essential to developing best practices in education. These projects are collaboratively constructed with support from partner mentor teachers from the public schools who help develop the leading questions that provide the impetus for the research. Together, the MAT student apprentice and the mentor teacher construct a research design for implementation during the winter or spring quarter. Typically, research questions investigate real questions about student learning in the context of authentic practices in the academic discipline. MAT faculty act as advisers to these projects, providing support throughout the process, from the initial development of research questions and literature reviews in the summer quarter until the final "publication" of the research document at the end of the winter quarter. 6 credits.
• Biology 536. Teaching Practicum I
  MAT students enter the public school classroom of a partner mentor teacher in a two-phase cycle. For four weeks in September, MAT apprentices participate in the critical first weeks of school, engaging in the process that shapes the learning culture, which will continue to develop through the year. Returning for five weeks in the winter quarter, students rejoin the classroom with increasing responsibilities and commitments to the task of teaching. Students act as full-time apprentices and research partners, assuming increasing responsibility for instruction, and collecting and analyzing data with their mentor teachers. In a radical departure from conventional student-teaching models, apprentices work closely with their mentors, moving gradually from participant observer to teaching assistant to coteacher and, finally, assuming primary responsibility for classroom instruction in all its dimensions. The mentor teacher and the graduate adviser observe regularly and provide ongoing formative evaluations in close collaboration with the student. Students also meet with their MAT peers throughout the student-teaching cycle to support each other through shared writing, reflection, and discussion. 8 credits.
• Biology 546. Teaching Practicum II
  MAT students complete the apprenticeship cycle with a second mentor teacher for an 11-week period that ends in early June. The field experience is structured to provide the MAT student with ongoing guidance and feedback from the graduate adviser and the mentor teacher. An apprenticeship model that emphasizes the guided acquisition of teaching competencies, carefully monitored by mentor and adviser, insures that student learning in the public school classroom is not compromised and that the apprentice is held to standards in teaching that reflect program concerns for authentic learning in the disciplines. MAT students continue to meet weekly as a group to share and reflect upon their experiences. 8 credits.

Sample Biology Calendar (PDF)

History

Students of the MAT Program in history graduate with a sophisticated understanding of history as a craft rather than a mere accumulation of factual details about the past, and an enthusiasm for the value of historical study. Toward these ends, the history curriculum challenges students with the following goals: to build awareness of political and social contexts in gathering historical and social studies knowledge, appreciation of the value of multiple voices in the construction of historical narratives, familiarity with major themes in the historical narratives addressed in the public school system, and to develop historical inquisitiveness and an ability to make independent historical inquiry. The program also focuses on skilled weighing of the validity and usefulness of primary and secondary historical texts.

The Discipline

• History 512. Historical Scholarship and "The Mystic Chords of Memory"
  This course begins by tackling two key matters for historians: the "noble dream" of objectivity in historical scholarship, and the many "houses of history." The major focus in this course is to bring these issues into an investigation of the relationship between historical scholarship and the popular consumption of history through films, museums and historic sites, historical novels, and even textbooks. Students explore the politics of history by addressing the following questions: Who writes history, and for what purpose(s)? How are collective memories constructed and effectively disseminated? Can civic, commercial, and intellectual approaches to history comfortably coexist? Can historical scholarship exist outside of its usefulness? Who uses history? Must a utilitarian approach to history compromise historical truth? How have the answers to these questions changed over time, and why? At the end of the course, to connect this exploration of public history, popular history, collective memory, history as national narrative, and professional history, students examine one historical case study and review its treatment in scholarly monographs, textbooks, film, fiction, and historic sites. 3 credits.
• History 514. The Atlantic World in the Making of Colonial and Early America
  In seeking a short route to the Indies in the 15th century, Europeans unwittingly began the process of transforming the Atlantic Ocean from barrier into basin. The demographic, intellectual, technological, economic, and biological exchanges-often unequal and involuntary-among the peoples on the four continents bordering the Atlantic provide a laboratory for understanding the global dynamic in historical processes that are frequently discussed only in national contexts. The causes, character, and impact of these Atlantic cross-fertilizations in the early modern era and early industrial age are ultimately considered for the way in which they shaped colonial America and the first decades of United States history. 3 credits.
• History 517. American Revolutions
  The extent to which the American Revolution can be considered a revolution at all, especially when considered in global or comparative terms, is a matter historians have often considered; this course begins with a review of this discussion. The bulk of the course, however, considers the historiography of the American Revolution more generally. That is, students read and discuss various interpretations of the conflict that eventuated in the break of British North American colonies from England. There is some background reading on the colonial experience in British North America prior to 1763, followed by readings that cover the period from 1763 to 1789, not merely the years following the Declaration of Independence. Attention is paid to differing approaches to this subject-political, economic, military, social, cultural, and ideological-and the resulting understandings of the purposes, conduct, meaning, and impact of the American Revolution. 3 credits.
• History 522. Writing and Thinking about History
  This course is a graduate-level survey of recent developments in the research and writing of history as practiced by professional historians. After brief consideration of the transition from political to social history in the mid-20th century, the bulk of the course engages with the shift from social history to the multiplicity of approaches that came out of the "theory explosion" of the 1970s and 1980s. The course also considers questions regarding the conventions of historical scholarship, from footnotes to the etiquette and purpose of book reviews. The readings for this course draw from the fields of modern European, African, and world history. Proceeding nearly chronologically in the order in which they were published, the course surveys important works that exemplify specific approaches to the writing of history. The larger questions students keep in mind throughout the course are: What are the interpretive strategies used and debated by historians? What type of evidence does the author use? How does a historian work with both evidence and interpretive frameworks to produce historical writing? 3 credits.
• History 524. Revolutions
  This world history course is designed both to give students a broad exposure to three revolutions-the French, the Russian, and the Chinese-and to explore the following questions about the use of world-historical narratives to understand non-Western history: Can we call what happened in South Africa's antiapartheid struggle a revolution? Why is it not called the South African Revolution? How does engaging with the specifics of the South African case help in understanding larger world-historical ideologies and changes? How does engaging with world-historical concepts of change both help and hinder our understanding of the South African case? Can one avoid turning world history of the modern period into a Eurocentric enterprise? There are no preset answers to these questions; however, students prepare to engage with these questions by learning about the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions, the African anticolonial struggle, and the history of 20th-century South Africa through secondary texts; historiographical essays; historical monographs; multimedia sources including film, song, poetry, and fiction; and with firsthand testimonies. Students write several short papers, engage in role-play activities, and write a longer, integrative thematic essay engaging with the essential questions of the course. 3 credits.
• History 528. Slavery
  Slavery can be defined as an institution in which an individual's labor is extracted-usually for the duration of his/her life, usually with the imprimatur of recognized legal authorities, and usually with some sort of social stigma attached to enslaved status. This system of inequality has touched every human civilization: since ancient times, societies in Asia, Africa, pre-Columbian America, and Europe have all practiced various forms of slavery. Debt, poverty, war victories, ideology, religion, race, and sex have provided some of the avenues and reasons for the enslavement of human populations. This course focuses on the ideas, practices, and experiences of slavery in Greek and Roman societies in the eighth century b.c.e. through the second century c.e., slavery during the Golden Age of Islam, and indigenous African slavery and then later in the Americas, particularly North America, from the 17th through the 19th centuries. The historical "progression" of slavery forms, the relationships among types of slavery, and the differences among slavery systems are also discussed. 3 credits.
• History 532. Academic Research Project
  The history research project is a 30-page research paper intended to give history students experience in the kind of discipline-based thinking about their subject matter that will find practical application in secondary school teaching. The paper requires students to combine critical reading and writing about historical topics, historiographical commentary on secondary sources, and formal historical writing techniques as they review one of several possible topics they will have to cover as secondary school teachers. They are required to analyze the secondary historical literature on a topic of their choosing from one of the broad themes from the current U.S. and/or global history curriculum in New York State, and then place each of their sources within its historiographical context. Students may conclude their papers by suggesting avenues for future historical research and/or questions raised or remaining in their minds by their analytical reviews of sources. The history research project progresses over the course of the summer and fall quarters and is completed during the January Research Cycle. For distinction credit, and only with the approval of the history faculty, students may choose to extend the research projects through the end of the winter quarter by undertaking original research using archival or other primary material related to their topics. 6 credits total.

Discipline and Pedagogy

• History 513. Teaching Social Studies: The Learner as Individual, A Field Experience
  Students spend one morning per week in a local summer school program. This introduction to the public schools provides MAT students with opportunities to work with students one-on-one or in small groups in a tutorial mode. As a first experience with the public schools, graduate students are involved with diagnostic approaches to teaching, focusing on individuals with various kinds of recognized academic needs. These experiences provide real contexts for inquiry and study in the summer teaching strand. Required noncredit course.
• History 516. History Education: Teaching/Lab Strand
  Cotaught by a history professor and an education professor, this three-hour weekly lab class focuses on history teaching in the secondary schools. Students make connections between the content taught in the education and history courses through the exploration of essential questions including the following: How can a teacher of history in the secondary schools lead his or her students to become historically literate and to acquire the skills necessary to think historically? How can learning theories inform instruction for authentic historical learning, such as working with primary sources and complex historical narratives? How does one achieve these goals while coping with the constraints imposed by standardized curricula and state-mandated tests, short class periods, and large class sizes? How do we engage with the recurring tension between coverage and depth in the social studies curricula? In what ways can learning theories be used to develop authentic assessments? How can learning theories also help in the development of effective classroom management? Students analyze the New York State social studies standards and curricula, the New York State Regents exams in global history and in U.S. history and government, and the New York State eighth-grade social studies assessment. The analysis includes discussion of the distinctions between middle school and high school history teaching. A certain amount of lab time is devoted to working with data gleaned from observations made in the public schools. Students have the opportunity to see sample secondary school history lessons taught by their professors, then practice planning such lessons themselves. These sample lesson-modeling and lesson-building activities draw from the course material covered in both the history and education courses that run concurrently with the lab. Required noncredit course.
• History 518. Classroom Research Project
  This independent study course requires students to become teacher-researchers, examining the effects of particular practices or designs on student learning in the context of their particular field of study. Review of the pertinent literature, research design and implementation, analysis of data, and conclusions leading to further iterations build a practice of inquiry and reflection that are essential to developing best practices in education. These projects are collaboratively constructed with support from partner mentor teachers from the public schools who help develop the leading questions that provide the impetus for the research. Together, the MAT student apprentice and the mentor teacher construct a research design for implementation during the winter or spring quarter. Typically, research questions investigate real questions about student learning in the context of authentic practices in the academic discipline. MAT faculty act as advisers to these projects, providing support over three quarters, from the initial development of research questions and literature reviews in the summer quarter until the final "publication" of the research document at the end of the winter quarter. 6 credits.
• History 536. Teaching Practicum I
  MAT students enter the public school classroom of a partner mentor teacher in a two-phase cycle. For four weeks in September, MAT apprentices participate in the critical first weeks of school, engaging in the process that shapes the learning culture, which will continue to develop through the year. Returning for five weeks in the winter quarter, students rejoin the classroom with increasing responsibilities and commitments to the task of teaching. Students act as full-time apprentices and research partners, assuming increasing responsibility for instruction, and collecting and analyzing data with their mentor teachers. In a radical departure from conventional student-teaching models, apprentices work closely with their mentors, moving gradually from participant observer to teaching assistant to coteacher and, finally, assuming primary responsibility for classroom instruction in all its dimensions. The mentor teacher and the graduate adviser observe regularly and provide ongoing formative evaluations in close collaboration with the student. Students also meet with their MAT peers throughout the student-teaching cycle to support each other through shared writing, reflection, and discussion. 8 credits.
• History 546. Teaching Practicum II
  MAT students complete the apprenticeship cycle with a second mentor teacher for an 11-week period that ends in early June. The field experience is structured to provide the MAT student with ongoing guidance and feedback from the graduate adviser and the mentor teacher. An apprenticeship model that emphasizes the guided acquisition of teaching competencies, carefully monitored by mentor and adviser, insures that student learning in the public school classroom is not compromised and that the apprentice is held to standards in teaching that reflect program concerns for authentic learning in the disciplines. MAT students continue to meet weekly as a group to share and reflect upon their experiences. 8 credits.

Sample History Calendar (PDF)

Literature

In "The American Scholar," Emerson writes:

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

The secondary school English teacher invites young people to read creatively, to write with intelligence and imagination, and to grapple with the essential questions that literature asks. It follows that an English teacher should have read widely and should know the texts and contexts that have shaped the development of literature in English and of literary studies generally. By that same token, she should be skilled at reading closely-at analyzing literary and critical texts with an awareness of the diverse models of close reading that literary theory has generated. In her work with adolescents, she should be particularly aware of what affects reading comprehension and of the kinds of instruction that foster it. Finally, she should be a writer who has insight into how composition facilitates understanding and encourages complex thinking. Within the constraints of an intensive program, the MAT English curriculum attempts to address these needs through the integrated study of literature, literary criticism, and literacy pedagogy.

The Discipline

• Literature 512. Author Study
  The purpose of this course is to focus in depth on one or more authors and related literary criticism and scholarship. By becoming familiar with the author's major and minor works, knowledgeable about biographical and historical contexts, and proficient in talking and writing about the author, students engage in a process that not only gives them command of a significant writer and her milieu, but also models a way of studying literature that they could replicate at the secondary level. Course goals include investigating the author's mastery of a particular genre and participation in a specific literary movement. Choice of author(s) is up to the discretion of the instructor; recent versions of the course have focused on Poe, Hawthorne, James, and Kincaid. 3 credits.
• Literature 514. Special Topics: Literature and History
  In his preface to Prometheus Unbound, Percy Shelley writes, "Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations of their age. From this subjection the loftiest do not escape." This course seeks to address the complex relationship between literature and history by focusing on a specific period or issue in literary study-such as the Romantic period, Shakespeare's tragedies, or poetry by women-and considering it in light of such historically informed practices as reception study, textual bibliography, the "new" historicism, and cultural materialism. Emphasis is placed on the ways that archival work and historical contextualization can be incorporated productively into the classroom. Readings include a balance of theory, criticism, and primary literature. Recent courses have included "Shakespeare and the New Historicism" and "Romanticism and Readers." 3 credits.
• Literature 522. Topics in World Literature
  With Anglophone literatures (e.g., Indian, African, and Caribbean texts written in English) and literature in translation as its primary texts, this seminar focuses on the cultural, historical, and theoretical issues around studying and teaching "world literature" in the English class. Recent topics in the seminar have included "The Empire Writes Back," with emphasis on revisions of standard English literary texts by postcolonial writers from Africa and the Caribbean; "Orientalism," a course inspired by the seminal work of Edward Said; and "The Poet in the 20th-Century World," a study of international poetry and poetics. 3 credits.
• Literature 524. Special Topics: Literature and Identity
  As frameworks for reading, identity theories help us consider how individuals and groups are represented in literature, as well as why they are so represented. Theories of identity-from the sociopolitical feminisms of the early women's movement to recent theories of gender, race, and class-have come to play a major role in the work of literary scholars, leading to innovative ways of looking at canonical texts and bringing new and diverse works into the literature curriculum. This course takes up one identity theory and explores how it can illuminate a given body or period of literature: for example, how gender studies can highlight the contributions of U.S. women writers in a mid-century canon dominated by male authors, or how considerations of race and ethnicity might enrich our readings of turn-of-the-century urban fiction. As in the companion course, Literature and History (514), emphasis is placed on the ways that archival historical contextualization can be incorporated productively into the classroom. Readings include a balance of theory, criticism, and primary literature. Recent offerings have included "Caribbean Aesthetics" and "Gender and Domesticity in 19th-Century America." 3 credits.
• Literature 532. Academic Research Project
  The culmination of the MAT literature student's graduate work in literature is a scholarly project of research and writing. The project builds on research skills addressed in the core literature courses from the summer and fall, but it also asks students to do something "new" and essential to the life of a literature teacher, who, when provided a topic and a general set of criteria, carries out research in the primary sources and criticism of the topic, becomes conversant in what other literature teachers and scholars are saying about it, and begins to engage in that conversation with ideas of her own. Work for the literature research project begins in the final week of summer quarter, when students select one of two research courses. The MAT literature faculty choose the topics of these courses based on relevance to the MAT students' futures as secondary English teachers and a perceived need in the MAT curriculum; they also seek to ensure that the topics are general enough to accommodate a range of individual interests and grounded enough to provide a common set of texts and ideas from which students can carry out the next steps in the project. For 2009-10, research course topics are: "The Making of an American: The Immigrant Experience" and "Shakespeare and the Critics." In preparation for the meeting of their research group in September, students read a list of texts selected by their professors and write a five-page essay that identifies major issues and essential questions shared by those texts. Copies of these essays and questions are distributed at the initial meeting. Each student is charged with further developing the reading list based on his choice of the major issues or questions that the group identified, as well as his own interests. Subsequently, each student meets with the adviser twice during the coming weeks. For each meeting, the student prepares a five-page reflective essay on the new materials he has read, and articulates a new set of questions for further research. The project culminates in an annotated bibliography of the readings and a 10-page essay. Students whose work in the program and on the discipline project has been excellent may choose to pass with distinction. These students continue their research into the spring quarter and write a 35-page essay similar in kind to a current scholarly article. They are closely advised by their professors, but the work itself is deemed extra; that is, it falls outside the requirements of the program and should not impede progress on the core spring requirements. For those students who choose to pursue the pass with distinction honor, the 10-page paper is a starting point. Six credits total.

Discipline and Pedagogy

• Literature 513. Teaching Literature: The Learner as Individual, A Field Experience
  Students spend one morning per week in a local summer school program. This introduction to the public schools provides MAT students with opportunities to work with students one-on-one or in small groups in a tutorial mode. As a first experience with the public schools, graduate students are involved with diagnostic approaches to teaching, focusing on individuals with various kinds of recognized academic needs. These experiences provide real contexts for inquiry and study in the summer teaching strand. Required noncredit course.
• Literature 516. English Education: Teaching/Lab Strand
  Through the summer and fall quarters, literature students participate in an English teaching lab that is cotaught by a literature professor and an education professor. In the lab, MAT students develop a repertoire of strategies for effective secondary English instruction by, first and foremost, reflecting on how their work as literature scholars provides a model for the work of their future secondary school students. MAT students also examine secondary school English standards and curricula, practice methods of reading/writing assessment and instruction, and investigate issues specific to teaching English in multiethnic and high-needs settings. Questions that the lab seeks to address include: How can reading and writing workshops facilitate authentic literary inquiry? How can literary theory enrich the ways secondary school students read text? What are the relationships between multicultural education and advanced studies in global and postcolonial literatures? Is in-depth study of a single author, period, or problem in literature preferable to the "survey" that is typical in most secondary schools? What strategies allow literary scholarship to flourish in a middle or high school classroom despite the constraints of time, standardized curricula, and state-mandated tests? Required noncredit course.
• Literature 518. Classroom Research Project
  This independent study course requires students to become teacher-researchers, examining the effects of particular practices or designs on student learning in the context of their particular field of study. Review of the pertinent literature, research design and implementation, analysis of data, and conclusions leading to further iterations build a practice of inquiry and reflection that are essential to developing best practices in education. These projects are collaboratively constructed with support from partner mentor teachers from the public schools who help develop the leading questions that provide the impetus for the research. Together, the MAT student apprentice and the mentor teacher construct a research design for implementation during the winter or spring quarter. Typically, research questions investigate real questions about student learning in the context of authentic practices in the academic discipline. MAT faculty act as advisers to these projects, providing support throughout the process, from the initial development of research questions and literature reviews in the summer quarter until the final "publication" of the research document at the end of the winter quarter. 6 credits.
• Literature 536. Teaching Practicum I
  MAT students enter the public school classroom of a partner mentor teacher in a two-phase cycle. For four weeks in September, MAT apprentices participate in the critical first weeks of school, engaging in the process that shapes the learning culture, which will continue to develop through the year. Returning for five weeks in the winter quarter, students rejoin the classroom with increasing responsibilities and commitments to the task of teaching. Students act as full-time apprentices and research partners, assuming increasing responsibility for instruction, and collecting and analyzing data with their mentor teachers. In a radical departure from conventional student-teaching models, apprentices work closely with their mentors, moving gradually from participant observer to teaching assistant to coteacher and, finally, assuming primary responsibility for classroom instruction in all its dimensions. The mentor teacher and the graduate adviser observe regularly and provide ongoing formative evaluations in close collaboration with the student. Students also meet with their MAT peers throughout the student-teaching cycle to support each other through shared writing, reflection, and discussion. 8 credits.
• Literature 546. Teaching Practicum II
  MAT students complete the apprenticeship cycle with a second mentor teacher for an 11-week period that ends in early June. The field experience is structured to provide the MAT student with ongoing guidance and feedback from the graduate adviser and the mentor teacher. An apprenticeship model that emphasizes the guided acquisition of teaching competencies, carefully monitored by mentor and adviser, insures that student learning in the public school classroom is not compromised and that the apprentice is held to standards in teaching that reflect program concerns for authentic learning in the disciplines. MAT students continue to meet weekly as a group to share and reflect upon their experiences. 8 credits.

Sample Literature Calendar (PDF)

Mathematics

The MAT program’s mathematics curriculum provides a broad and deep background in the discipline and excels in preparing mathematicians to be teachers. The student dedicated to becoming a mathematics teacher values the Bard MAT Program’s commitment to the discipline with its substantive research projects in mathematics and mathematics education. In addition to gaining a solid understanding of teaching methodology as it relates to mathematics, Bard students also further develop their own ability as mathematicians so they may pass along their interests in the discipline to future students.

The Discipline

• Math 512. Analysis
  Real analysis is the study of the real number system. Students develop the fundamental topics of calculus including limits, continuity, differentiation, integration, sequences, and series. 3 credits.
• Math 514. Algebra
  Ring theory is an abstraction of the algebraic properties of arithmetic. This course focuses on factorization properties of various rings, including modular arithmetic, integral domains, and polynomial rings. 3 credits.
• Math 522. Geometry
  This course focuses on students' construction of definitions, theorems, and proofs in Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries. Topic areas may also include projective geometry, fractals, symmetry, and polyhedra. 3 credits.
• Math 524. Applied Mathematics
  The power of mathematics cannot be fully appreciated without an understanding of how broadly the discipline can be applied in the real world. This course introduces students to a variety of problems that a person working as an applied mathematician would be expected to solve. Often many different mathematical and nonmathematical topics are required to solve such problems. Students may explore areas such as algorithms, topology, computational geometry, statistics, and natural and social science topics. 3 credits.
• Math 532. Academic Research Project
  This is a two-quarter investigation of questions generated by the student in consultation with a faculty adviser. The project requires the student to:
• Become an expert in a particular area of mathematics, an expertise demonstrated with a deep mathematical understanding of the area and also the knowledge necessary to answer reflective and historical questions-who, what, why, and when-about the area
• Produce a new mathematical synthesis of ideas and possibly new concepts and results
• Write a report demonstrating that the above requirements have been met and present it for discussion by mathematics program students and faculty. For distinction credit, and only with the approval of the mathematics faculty, students may choose to continue this research into the winter quarter by undertaking original research related to their project. 6 credits total.