teaching

Courses Offered - Spring 2012

Children in Contemporary Society

CCS 150.01/PubPol 124.01
Leslie Babinski, Research Scientist, Center for Child and Family Policy
Tu 10:05 am – 12:55 pm

Using an interdisciplinary approach, this course provides an overview of key issues facing today's youth. The course will outline the major developmental stages of childhood and address the intersection between the child and the major influences in a child's life: parents and family life; education, health, and service systems; neighborhoods and communities; the media; and the economy. A core objective is to develop an understanding of risk and protective factors related to childhood adversity, including health inequities, family violence, mental health problems, delinquency, and poverty, and the role of social programs and policies in shaping children's lives. Emphasis will be placed on: 1) applying theory to solving complex societal problems, and 2) using materials and methodologies from different disciplines (psychology, public policy, sociology, economics) to facilitate learning across traditional disciplinary boundaries. CCS150 is a required course for certificate program Children in Contemporary Society, but is open to all undergraduate students.

Multi-Method Approaches to Social and Policy Research

PubPol 183.01/CCS 183.01
Jose Sandoval
TuTh 10:05 – 11:20 am and Wed 11:55 am – 12:45 pm

In this course we will examine the crucial steps to conducting social science research, including developing research questions and hypotheses, research designs, and methods of data analysis. This class will not only help you understand and critically evaluate the research of others, but it will also provide you with the necessary tools to develop your own research projects. The class has a hands-on component. Students will be trained in a lab to use content analysis software (Atlasti) leading to analysis of current public policy text. Students will also be introduced, in a lab setting, to Stata, a statistical applications software. Quantitative methods will be reviewed through secondary data analysis using Stata. Descriptive statistics and simple inferential methods will be used. One of the objectives of this course is that students will identify contemporary problems and then develop research questions and methods to address those questions. This course fulfills the research methods requirement for the Children in Contemporary Society certificate program. Approval from instructor is required.

Multidisciplinary Approaches to Contemporary Children's Issues (capstone)

CCS 191S.01
Joel Rosch, Senior Research Scholar, Center for Child and Family Policy
M 4:25 – 6:55 pm

This course is open to any student in the social sciences who has completed or is completing an independent research project through independent study or honor thesis. In the course students will: (1) work on an issue which they have already researched or are currently researching; (2) learn how to translate their scholarship to policy recommendations; (3) learn how to present their analysis in oral, academic, and lay-public forums; (4) Look at their own project from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The course will require students to re-examine their original research on a problem and to re-analyze it from a policy perspective using multiple disciplines, such as history, economics, political science, sociology, and psychology. In a real sense students will be doing research, on their own research. Each student will produce four documents on the same project: 1) five-page summary of their own independent research project, written for their own discipline; 2) poster presentation of standard research-conference size; 3) policy brief of three to five double-spaced pages; and 4) lay editorial or op-ed of 750 words. Communicating a project in these multiple formats will teach students to translate their scholarship to policy and practice. CCS191S is a required course for certificate program Children in Contemporary Society, but is open to all undergraduate students. Approval from instructor is required.

 

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