The EDJ major provides opportunities to examine critical questions, theories, practices, and research in the field of education. Courses in the major provide the conceptual knowledge for students to engage in critical thinking about social and policy contexts as well as everyday practices affecting inequitable structures in schooling, society, and culture that have enduring impacts on the quality of our democracy and communities.

Learning Experience

The major’s course of study explores the history and politics of education and public schooling and their relation to the formation of just and democratic societies; theories of cognition, learning, and pedagogy; and issues of equity and cultural and linguistic diversity in education and in public school policies and practices. The major does not focus on education in international contexts but will address the effects of immigration and globalization on U.S. education.

Study and Research Opportunities

The EDJ major’s sociocultural perspective emphasizes equity and social justice related education in and out of school, with a particular focus on how cognition, language, and knowledge production, circulation, and mobilization are related to social, cultural, and other identities and their processes of formation. Students will examine critical, transformative pedagogies that focus on meeting the needs of low-income, ethnically, racially, and linguistically non-dominant students and their families, and how these pedagogies support the development of more healthy and flourishing children and youth and a more just and democratic society.

Declaring the Minor

To officially declare a general minor in education, students must submit a petition in MyUCSC and share their major Academic Planning Form with the department’s undergraduate advisor. Students pursuing a minor in education should meet with the Education Department’s peer advisor as early as possible.

To be eligible to declare the general minor in education, students must have:

✔ completed or be enrolled in EDUC 60, Schooling, Democracy, and Justice ; and

✔ be declared in a major.