Re-Enlivening the Disciplines
MEd Interdisciplinary topic for practicing professionals
Program Overview
Disciplines, as they are taught in schools often appear to be static, fixed and separate “subject areas”, disembodied because they are severed from the ways of life and the ways of knowing that generated them. Knowledge is represented as settled, objective, and “out there”, a thing, rather than a living entity, drained of what is deeply felt, and thereby lacking any heightened sense of meaning, value and significance in the lives of students. This is especially true in the current context of the rapid proliferation of digital data, which often times reduces embodied knowledge to consumable information. Yet the disciplines are alive and open onto an animate universe, providing unique and fruitful ways of inquiring into and being engaged with the world around us. If we engage in this way, coming to know would also mean coming to care deeply for our earthly home, and the beings that inhabit it.
This four-course topic seeks to re-enliven the disciplines, connecting school subjects organically—as they live in the world – to each other but also to the “subjective” side of “human-ized” learning: wonder, mystery, imagination, love, play, the joy of discovery, and meaningful knowledge-making. We will pose critical questions about the place and potential of the disciplines in today’s classrooms: What unique possibilities does the world present to us for disciplined inquiry? How can we make the disciplines more responsive to the world and thereby to students’ lives? How can we help students move into and dwell within the disciplines as spaces of engagement, play and loving discovery? How might imaginative forms of interdisciplinarity also work to revitalize the curriculum? Together, we will work to see the disciplines as living entities and seek ways to engage the world and the whole person in the unique processes of meaning-making that each of the disciplines offers.
Program Details
Courses in this program are offered fully online. Courses are held in both an asynchronous environment (D2L) and a synchronous (real-time) environment (Zoom) which allows instructors to virtually meet and talk with students and experience a live exchange of ideas, hear class presentations and do group work with access to a whiteboard. For additional information regarding online delivery, refer to the Online Delivery & eLearn website.
Program Goals:
- To develop a familiarity, within the field of curriculum studies, to the notion of experience as an aesthetically-funded process of being meaningfully situated in, and care-fully responsive to an animate world
- To examine, historically and critically, the relation between the human and more-than-human-world, and to consider how an exploration of embodied relationships might affect our approaches to curriculum
- To consider the particular ways of knowing, thinking, feeling—dwelling carefully in the world--that each discipline makes possible
- To explore, discuss and engage with ways to enliven school subjects so that they are responsive to local contexts and lived experience
- To provoke critical reflection on the role of attention, play, discovery, imagination, and engagement within the school subjects
- To apply course materials, discussions and activities to our work in schools and educational settings
Target Audience:
This certificate will be highly relevant for practicing teachers in elementary and junior high schools (K-9), and for those looking to provide curriculum leadership within schools.
A registration package will be sent to new students after they have been admitted. Registration for the summer term will be available in late winter. Fall and Winter registration opens in the spring. Your Graduate Program Administrator will send more information about registration to you.
Fee details are available through the University Calendar. An explanation of fees is available on the Faculty of Graduate Studies' website.
The University of Calgary offers multiple ways to meet the cost of your education. Please refer to the Awards, Scholarships and Bursaries page to learn more about options available to students. For additional information, please contact Student Financial Support.
Please refer to the MEd Interdisciplinary page for the latest Admission Requirements and Transcripts information.
Program Schedule & Course Descriptions
- Program begins each Summer term (refer to the Academic Schedule for specific dates)
- Outlines are normally available 1-2 weeks prior to the start of term in D2L
- 3 units per course
Term 1 - Summer
Uncovering the Curriculum
In this course, students will be introduced to basic concepts that frame the animate curriculum, and being sensually engaged, e.g., to develop a sense of place, or a feel for justice, or a love of knowledge. We will deconstruct the (Western) notions of a “sovereign self” and life within a “thingified” (commodified) world, and consider what it would mean to dwell in the world with others responsively, responsibly and imaginatively. We will consider what it might mean to live like this, in a complex web of loving relations, teachers, and curriculum makers.
Registration info:
EDER 693.11 L01 (50291)
Term 1 - Summer
Inquiry Through Mathematics & Fine Arts
This course takes a fresh approach to both mathematics and the fine arts by juxtaposing disciplines traditionally set in opposition to one another. Through acts of reflection, comparison and contrast, students will come to understand the distinct ways of knowing invited by mathematical and artistic inquiry, and will also identify creative places of connection and relationship between the disciplines. Areas of exploration may include: musical thinking; patterns, shapes and abstract thinking; problem-solving; spatial reasoning; perspective and design; and visual ways of knowing.
Registration info:
EDER 693.12 L03 (50292)
Term 2 - Fall
Inquiry Through the Humanities
Students will explore acts of sense- and meaning-making within both the language arts and social studies. Areas of exploration may include: historical thinking; critical literacy; multimodal communication; citizenship and ethics; relationship, community and identity; creativity and expression; and approaches to literature and media. We will consider the unique ways of knowing that are enabled by the language arts and by social studies, and also consider the places where the two might be productively brought together to create interdisciplinary forms of inquiry through the humanities.
Registration info:
EDER 693.13 L01 (73497)
Term 3 - Winter
Inquiry Through Sciences, Health & Environmental Education
Students will assess the limitations and possibilities of Western modes of scientific inquiry, and explore critical and Indigenous approaches to health, wellness, ecology and the natural world that encourage relationality. Topics for consideration may include: traditions of scientific inquiry; critical, interpretive and Indigenous approaches to science, health and physical education; scientific learning as as socially situated and participatory; intersections of environmental and social justice; and land-based experiential approaches to place, community and wellness.
Registration info:
EDER 693.14 L01 (13381)
Have Questions? Connect with Us
Graduate Programs in Education
gpe@ucalgary.ca
Academic Program Coordinator
Dr. Ronna Mosher
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