This course explores how home and school learning environments influence the development of language and literacy skills of children ages 3-8. It examines situations in which families and schools, although utilizing different languages, dialects, and ways of communicating, can work together to enhance children's language learning. Particular attention is given to children's development of academic language -- the written and spoken language needed to understand and create texts required for success in school.

In the role of a participant-observer, each student studies intensively the social and personality development of the children in one classroom at the Gorse Children's Center at Stonybrook. Students learn how to articulate developmental changes and individual differences by analyzing detailed observations. Topics include social cognition, peer relationships, social skills, concepts of friendship, emotional development, identity formation, self-esteem, and the social and cultural context of development.

What do we learn? How do we learn? Why do we learn? In this course, we will study issues of learning, teaching, and motivation that are central to educational psychology. We will explore the shifting paradigms within educational psychology, multiple subject matter areas, (dis)continuities between classroom and home cultures, students' prior experiences, teachers as learners, ethnic and gender identity in the classroom, and learning in out-of-school settings. Requires a prepracticum in a community-based setting.

Examines changes in cognitive, social, and emotional functioning, including theory and research that illuminate some central issues in characterizing these changes: the relative contributions of nature and nurture, the influence of the context on development, continuity versus discontinuity in development, and the concept of stage. Includes observations at the Gorse Children's Center at Stonybrook.

What is race? Who decides? Are we a 'postracial' society? This course focuses on historical, social, psychological, and legal underpinnings of the social construction of race and examines how perspectives on race have influenced the lives of students and teachers in schools. Class sessions compare the old vs.

This course focuses on individual and small-group behavior in the organizational setting. The basic objective is to increase knowledge and understanding of human behavior in organizations - especially each individual's own behavior. Three types of knowledge are stressed: (1) intellectual information regarding human behavior in an organizational context; (2) understanding of oneself as a person and as a leader; and (3) behavioral skills in dealing with people.

This course surveys a range of topics within social psychology. How do other people influence us? How do people perceive one another? How do attitudes develop and change? Under what conditions do people conform to, or deviate from, social norms? We will survey concepts across several areas of social psychology with an emphasis on empirical research evidence.