Classes This Semester

ALUMNI INTERVIEW PROGRAM: Before I get to the meat of the blog, just wanted to let everyone know that February is the last month of the Alumni Interview Program.  If you're a prospective masters student and are interested in an alumni interview, fill out the request form and submit your application and we'll try to match you with an alum for an interview.  All your materials must be in by the end of the month to be considered.

So before we get too far into the semester, I figured I'd take the time to write about my courses for the semester.  This semester I'm taking four courses as well as finishing up my masters paper.  These, along with the five I took last semester and the one credit I had taken prior to matriculating (I took a gse course while I was in medical school in anticipation of this year) will give me my ten credits to complete the program and graduate in May.

EDUC 544: School and Society - this course is about how the school system in America developed, its theoretical underpinnings and how it is a representation of the various interests at play in American society.  We've already covered some of the introductory topics, such as the differences between education and schooling, the purpose of schooling in a democracy, the traditional perspective on schooling: structuralism and functionalism, as well as the progressive perspective.  Still to come include the egalitarian perspective, critical and radical perspectives, libertarian perspective, post-structuralism, multicultural education, standards-based reform and barriers to reform.

EDUC 561: Adolescent Development - this course is, as its title might indicate, about adolescent development, we'll cover it from a variety of perspectives.  The course is divided up into three parts, the introductory overview, identity, and relationships.  In the introductory portion, so far we've looked at difference perceptions of adolescence, the biology of adolescence, and decision making/cognitive development.  We start part II next week with a discussion of self identity, which is followed by racial/ethnic identity, gender identity, sexuality/sexual identity, academic identity, and religious/spiritual identity.  In the final portion on of the course on relationships, we'll discuss the family, friends/peers/interpersonal relationships, and resilience/happiness.  In addition to this, we'll work in groups to compile an intervention aimed at prevention as well as to compile an analysis of our own adolescence using the theories studied in class.

EDUC 682: Qualitative Modes of Inquiry - in this class we'll be looking at qualitative research methods.  This course started out with characteristics of qualitative research, discussed the five major techniques of qualitative research, and then we had a session on ethnography.  Next week we begin with qualitative traditions/frameworks/theories, and then move on to looking at interviewing, life histories, focus groups, a data analysis workshop, a discussion of observation, proxemics and kinetics archival research, artifact collection and content analysis, followed by another data analysis workshop.  The course will conclude by looking at how data is managed, recorded and analyzed,a discussion of ethics, reflection, and objectivity as well as a session about "Writing Culture: Research Designs, Proposals and Reports.  During this class, we'll gain experience with qualitative research by actually doing some of it.  I'll be observing some case-based sessions during the Friday pediatric didactics for the Peds 200 course (not only accomplishing the goals of the course, but hopefully acting as a little refresher for peds as I've now been away from clinical medicine for quite some time...)

HCMG 845: Managed Care and Industrial Organizations of Healthcare - this course (if you couldn't tell from the course heading) is not a GSE course, but a Healthcare Management course at Wharton.  The first half of the course covers topics related to managed care, essentially explaining how our current healthcare system operates.  The second half of the course will look at various industrial organizations of healthcare (ACO's, Physician-centric delivery models, and capitation models).  The course also entails two group projects.  One on an aspect of managed care and the other on an aspect of industrial organizations of healthcare.

In addition to this, I'll be furiously working to complete my masters paper by its deadline of April 8.