Praxis II
If you have questions about Praxis II courses, please contact Liv Raddatz at lraddatz@brynmawr.edu or Tiffany Stahl at tstahl@brynmawr.edu.
Praxis II Departmental Courses include a more substantial fieldwork component that engages students in activities and projects off-campus that are linked directly to course objectives and are useful to the community partner.
Spring 2024 Praxis II Courses
SOCL B258 Sociology of Education
T & Th 8:25- 9:45 AM | Instructor: David Karen
In this course, students will analyze sociological theories and their relationships between education and society, focusing on the effects of education on inequality in the United States. This course also examines the historical development of primary, secondary, and post-secondary education in the United States. Other topics include education and social selection, testing and tracking, and micro- and macro-explanations of differences in educational outcomes. This is a Praxis II course; placements are in local schools.
Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC); Counts Toward Child and Family Studies; Counts Toward Education; Counts Toward Praxis Program
EDUC B220 Changing Pedagogies in Mathematics and Science
T 7:10 - 10:00 PM | Instructor: Victor Donnay
This Praxis course will examine research-based approaches to teaching mathematics and science. What does research tell us about how people learn? How can one translate this learning theory into teaching approaches that will help all students learn mathematics and science? How are these new approaches, that often involve active, hands-on, inquiry-based learning, being implemented in the classroom? What challenges arise when one tries to bring about these types of changes in education? How do issues of equity, discrimination, and social justice impact math and science education? The Praxis component of the course usually involves two (2) two-hour visits per week for 8 weeks to a local math or science classroom.
Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC); Counts Toward Praxis Program
ENGL B220 Writing in Theory/Writing in Practice
TTH 9:55 - 11:00 AM | Instructor: Jen Callaghan
This Praxis course is designed for students interested in teaching or tutoring writing at the high-school or college level. The course focuses on current theories of rhetoric and composition, theories of writing and learning, writing pedagogy, and literacy issues. Students will get hands-on experience with curriculum design and lesson planning, strategies for classroom teaching and individual instruction, and will develop digital projects related to multilingual writing and plagiarism. The Praxis components of the course are primarily project-based, but we may also make one or two group visits to local sites where writing is taught.
Writing Intensive; Critical Interpretation (CI)); Counts Toward Praxis Program
ANTHRO B246 The Everyday Life of Language: Field Research in Linguistic Anthropology
TTH 11:25 - 12:45 PM | Instructor: Amanda Weidman
The goal of this course is to develop an awareness of how language operates in various interactional and other (eg. ritual, performance, political) contexts that we commonly experience. The focus will be on gaining hands-on experience in doing linguistic anthropological data collection and analysis, while putting the results of individual student projects together as part of initiating an ongoing, multi-year project. Topics that students explore ethnographically may include language and gender; language, race and social indexicality; sociolinguistic variation; codeswitching; register and social stance; language and social media. Student research will involve ethnographic observation, audio-recording of spoken discourse, conducting interviews, and learning how to create a transcript to use as the basis for ethnographic analysis. For the praxis component of the course, students will use the experience they have gained to generate ideas for components of a middle school/high school language arts curriculum that incorporates linguistic anthropology concepts and student-driven research on language.
Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC); Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc); Counts Toward Praxis Program
Time Commitment
The time commitment for fieldwork varies greatly from course to course but falls within the range of two to seven hours per week or 20-70 hours per semester.
Praxis II courses might include:
- weekly fieldwork in local classrooms or community-based organizations;
- conducting research that has been requested by a community partner;
- project-based activities such as creating a curriculum, designing a website, or curating a museum exhibit.
Fieldwork Agreement
The Praxis Fieldwork Agreement is an important part of all Praxis II courses. This document outlines the learning and placement objectives of the Praxis component and is signed by the course instructor, the field supervisor, the Praxis coordinator and the student. These fieldwork agreements are specific to each course and the forms will be made available by the Praxis field placement coordinator for the course or by the instructor.
The Praxis component in Praxis II courses constitutes between 25-50 percent of total coursework assigned.
Previous departmental Praxis Courses
Contact Us
The Career & Civic Engagement Center
Phone: 610-526-5174