Value Creating Education

These courses help you become a “value-creating” educator:

JOSEI TODA'S EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE

This course introduces students to the thought and practice of influential Japanese educator and peace activist, Josei Toda (1900-1958). Centered on Today's principle of human revolution, or the profound and persistent inner transformation at one's deep interiority,the course covers the history and context informing Today's early and late pedagogy and social activism, and examines themes underpinning his sweeping and widely popular approaches to education and human development, including deductive reasoning across the curriculum, literacy development, educating society's most marginalized children, educational leadership, test-preparation, and value creation. The course also examines Today's declaration for the abolition of nuclear weapons and perspective on global citizenship as unifying forces across racial, ethnic, and geographic boundaries.

DAISAKU IKEDA'S PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE OF DIALOGUE

This course introduces candidates to Daisaku Ikeda's philosophy and practice of dialogue in, as, and for education. The course covers the history and context informing Ikeda's approach to dialogue across difference and examines key themes and topics in Ikeda's many published dialogues with leaders in the fields of politics, peace, culture, and education. Candidates in this course will read a number of Ikeda's published dialogues on education. In addition to deepening candidates' understanding and critical analyses of content and constituent elements of value-creating dialogue, this course provides conceptual,theoretical, and philosophical frameworks for dissertational research and lines of inquiry.

EDUCATION FOR GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP

This course examines education for global citizenship, or what is also called cosmopolitanism and world citizenship. Global citizenship is the idea that human individuals, irrespective of place of birth or cultural background, are citizens of the world. This course explores the idea of global citizenship and its implications for questions of justice, culture, and education. The course engages global citizenship from its historical development in the Western philosophical tradition, beginning in Ancient Greece, through the Enlightenment and into its most recent incarnation as a response to conditions of globalization. It will consider the manifestations of global citizenship beyond the West, with an especial focus on global citizenship in the pedagogy of value-creating educators Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, Josei Toda, and Daisaku Ikeda. Drawing resources from various disciplines (political theory, anthropology, moral philosophy, curriculum theory), this course seeks to understand the potential and limitations of global citizenship to respond to contemporary issues in education in times of globalization.