Career Goals Statement
I am applying to the Social and Comparative Analysis in Education (SCAE) Master’s of Arts (M.A.) program at the University of Pittsburgh with the intention of selecting the Social Context in Education specialization option. I believe my academic background analyzing the theories and utilizing the tools of the social sciences, along with my first-hand experience serving in a public school, makes me an ideal candidate for your master’s program. I want to conduct research analyzing the spoken and unspoken ideological, political, and economic imperatives of schooling and educational institutions. Too often discussions regarding the quality of education fail to ignite conversations about the overt and covert functions of schools …show more content…
I earned a B.A. in Political Science, with a minor in History, from Temple University, where I was initiated into the realms of American Politics and Political Theory, with a particular particular enthusiasm for critical pedagogy and critical theory’s various branches. During my senior year I gained substantive research experience as a research assistant for Dr. Robin Kolodny at Temple University where I evaluated the methodologies behind economic indices in reference to campaign finance legislation and researched the decision-making process behind the choice to use the particular economic indice chosen to determine campaign finance contribution limits. Additionally, my studies culminated in an original research paper, “The Normalization of Citizenship in Public Schools: Learning Lessons from Free Schools,” which I presented at the 2014 Pi Sigma Alpha Undergraduate Conference in February 2014. The research paper theorized that ideological, economic, and political systems converge at the macro level to create an image of the ideal citizen that exemplifies the norms of dominant social arrangements that students and teachers should supposedly reproduce in the classroom, and that the social and physical arrangements of “free schools” could inform practices in schools to move away from the embedded norms as forms of social control over students to institutional structures designed to encourage transformational learning and better prepare youth for a life of active democratic
I am applying to the Social and Comparative Analysis in Education (SCAE) Master’s of Arts (M.A.) program at the University of Pittsburgh with the intention of selecting the Social Context in Education specialization option. I believe my academic background analyzing the theories and utilizing the tools of the social sciences, along with my first-hand experience serving in a public school, makes me an ideal candidate for your master’s program. I want to conduct research analyzing the spoken and unspoken ideological, political, and economic imperatives of schooling and educational institutions. Too often discussions regarding the quality of education fail to ignite conversations about the overt and covert functions of schools …show more content…
I earned a B.A. in Political Science, with a minor in History, from Temple University, where I was initiated into the realms of American Politics and Political Theory, with a particular particular enthusiasm for critical pedagogy and critical theory’s various branches. During my senior year I gained substantive research experience as a research assistant for Dr. Robin Kolodny at Temple University where I evaluated the methodologies behind economic indices in reference to campaign finance legislation and researched the decision-making process behind the choice to use the particular economic indice chosen to determine campaign finance contribution limits. Additionally, my studies culminated in an original research paper, “The Normalization of Citizenship in Public Schools: Learning Lessons from Free Schools,” which I presented at the 2014 Pi Sigma Alpha Undergraduate Conference in February 2014. The research paper theorized that ideological, economic, and political systems converge at the macro level to create an image of the ideal citizen that exemplifies the norms of dominant social arrangements that students and teachers should supposedly reproduce in the classroom, and that the social and physical arrangements of “free schools” could inform practices in schools to move away from the embedded norms as forms of social control over students to institutional structures designed to encourage transformational learning and better prepare youth for a life of active democratic