Required Courses
The next intake is for Summer 2026. The program will run from Summer 2026 to Spring 2027. Courses have both synchronous and asynchronous components, including online (Zoom) class sessions. Any synchronous sessions are in Mountain Time (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada). Dates and times are determined by the course instructor.
These are graduate-level, credit courses, requiring between five and ten hours of coursework per week in the fall and winter terms (13 weeks). Courses offered in the spring and summer terms are condensed (six and three weeks respectively), so the amount of time spent on coursework is increased. This includes time spent on readings, assignments, presentations (group and individual), and writing papers.
Note: you must take a course in the term for which you apply. Course offerings are dependent upon sufficient enrollment.
Summer Term
EDU 595 Improving Students as Science Learners ★3
This course draws on perspectives on science learning and science learning environments and examines their practical implications for classroom teaching. Participants will learn about strategies for improving students' learning practices and their cognitive and metacognitive processes. The intent and content of this course acknowledge and reflect 'real-world' challenges faced by science teachers across subject areas and year levels.
Fall Term
EDU 595 Trends and Issues in Science Education ★3
Drawing on both personal experiences and the findings of contemporary research, this course delves into the current trends, challenges, and innovations shaping the field of science education. Participants will explore relevant issues in a broader understanding of learning, curriculum, and pedagogy by situating these in historical, cultural and social contexts framing contemporary school science.
Winter Term
EDU 595 Critical and Creative Science ★3
Participants will learn to design critical, interdisciplinary, and place-based approaches to science education that consider equity and social and environmental justice. To do so, they will engage with an informal science topic relevant to their specific commitments, roles, grade-levels, and geographic locations. Central topics include: (a) playful scientific inquiry, (b) science education for reconciliation, (c) STEAM education, and (d) forest school and nature pedagogy.
Spring Term
EDU 595 The Role of Literacy in Teaching, Learning, and Doing Science ★3
Language and literacy play a central role in science inquiry and in science learning as communication and sense-making are mediated by the communication genres specific to the discipline. This course examines the research on the role of literacy in science learning and provides opportunities to apply theory to practice in the development of instructional resources for integrating literacy in science instruction. Topics related to talk, reading, writing, and multimodal literacies in the teaching and learning of science will be explored.