Formative Education

An unprecedented venture in American higher education, the Department of Formative Education (DFE) is devoted to the interdisciplinary exploration of questions at once perennial and pressing: How do we educate whole persons for meaningful lives? How do we cultivate community? How do we nurture vision and values? In DFE, faculty conduct groundbreaking research on the cultivation of character, the expansion of imagination, and realization of purpose.

An Expansive View of Education

We propose that:

Education involves both knowing and doing: understanding the world and changing it.
Education goes beyond the transmission of discrete knowledge and skills to encompass the transformation of the whole person.
Education must address the full scope of our humanity: intellectual and practical, moral and civic, aesthetic and spiritual.
Education in school is just one aspect of a life-wide and lifelong formative process.
Education is not a technical matter of finding efficient means to given ends, but calls for judgment about the worthiness of the ends themselves.

An Interdisciplinary Community of Inquiry

Anthropology and cultural psychology help us think globally about human development, asking:

How do human beings make use of cultural resources to shape their identities, aspirations, and values?
What roles do parents, families, and communities play in children’s learning in different sociocultural contexts?
How does language frame social worlds and mediate meaning making?

The learning sciences and developmental technologies expand our conception of where, what, and how we learn, inviting us to:

Draw on our understanding of cognitive, social, and cultural processes to create new learning environments;
Investigate how we learn across formal and informal contexts of home and school, work and play, networks and communities;
Design and implement learning experiences that use coding, making, and robotics to play a positive role in children’s lives.

The formative humanities explore the existential and normative dimensions of educational experience:

History of formative education enriches the educational imagination by exploring different traditions of formative thought and illustrative examples of formative practice.
Philosophy of formative education brings into conversation three perennial questions: What is the human condition? What constitutes our flourishing? What fosters our growth?
Psychological humanities disclose the lived experience of personhood, examining the demands of relationships, the experience of suffering, and the dynamics of transformation.

A Formative Approach to Teaching and Learning

We seek to create spaces that:

Spark self-discovery;
Challenge us to attend more closely and notice the overlooked;
Integrate mind and body, thinking and feeling, fact and value, reflection and action, understanding and self-knowledge, life and school;
Connect learners in community;
Support dialogue across difference;
Inspire the pursuit of formative justice.

Explore DFE Programs

How to Apply

Early Childhood Policy and Leadership Certificate

<h3><b>PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS </b></h3> <ul> <li>Complete a three-course certificate in Early Childhood Policy and Leadership, including courses in the science of early childhood development; program and policy development and evaluation; and leadership, advocacy, and partnerships.</li> <li>Participate in monthly seminars, targeting key issues related to early childhood research, practice, policy, advocacy, and leadership over the course of three semesters. </li> <li>Complete a three-month, paid summer internship in a local, national, or international setting to solidify skills in policy development and analysis, leadership, advocacy, or research translation in the early childhood field.</li> <li>Translate learning from the internship and certificate courses by completing a capstone project, such as a policy brief, academic paper, or policy analysis.<br /> </li> </ul> <p> </p>

<p>Develop a deep understanding of the science of early childhood development and the policies and systems that intersect with young children and their families.<br /> </p>

bc:schools/LSOE/Department/elhe

Formative Education, Ph.D.

<h3><b>PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS </b></h3> <ul> <li>The program is built around the aim of helping students develop into sharp, imaginative, socially engaged, interdisciplinary thinkers. </li> <li>Drawing faculty from the diverse disciplinary traditions of history and philosophy, anthropology and humanistic psychology, design thinking, and the learning sciences, this program will prepare scholars and practitioners to examine the conceptual, empirical, and normative dimensions of formation. <br /> </li> </ul>

<p>Foster engaged scholar-practitioners whose rich, interdisciplinary intellectual formation allows them to address complex, normative questions about human transformation. The program seeks to prepare thought leaders in a variety of sectors whose research and work promote the development of whole persons toward lives of meaning and purpose. <br /> </p>

bc:schools/LSOE/academics/programs/higher-ed-edd

Learning Engineering, M.A.

<h3><b>PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS </b></h3> <ul> <li>Students complete design challenges, shadow working professionals, explore technology incubators, and intern with local organizations.</li> <li>Graduates leave the program with a dynamic portfolio that showcases the depth and breadth of their design work.</li> </ul>

<p>Prepare to design engaging and effective learning experiences that are informed by the learning sciences and incorporate cutting-edge technologies.</p>

DFE

Learning Engineer Learning Experience and User Experience Designer Instructional Designer or Evaluator Curriculum Developer Educational Technology Consultant

bc:schools/LSOE/academics/programs/learning-engineering

Transformative Educational Studies, B.A.

<h3><b>PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS</b></h3> <ul> <li>Coursework covers leading theories and strategies in curriculum; diversity, equity, inclusion; and formative education.</li> <li>Students are pushed to consider what it means to be an educator and how education should respond to contemporary social, environmental, and health crises.</li> <li>Program prepares students for 5th year master's programs at the Lynch School.</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p> </p>

<p>Study fundamental educational questions arising during this moment of social and educational transformation.</p>

DFE

English Teacher Science Teacher History Teacher ELA Teacher Associate General Counsel

bc:schools/LSOE/academics/programs/transformative-educational-ba

Faculty

View Less

Affiliate Faculty

View Less

Program Highlight

This panel discussion features four of our students in discussion with Program Director Chris Higgins. Our students answer core reflective questions about the major and discuss their experience in the Transformative Educational Studies program.

About Chris Higgins

Research

You don’t need me to tell you what education is. Everybody really knows that education... is the process of waking up to life.... It takes a heap of resolve to keep from going to sleep in the middle of the show. It’s not that we want to sleep our lives away. It’s that it requires certain kinds of energy, certain capacities for taking the world into our consciousness, certain real powers of body and soul to be a match for reality.

Mary Caroline Richards
I have become a question to myself.

Saint Augustine
Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable.

Hannah Arendt

News