I took this course in the autumn quarter of my senior year. As my interest in education grew, I though it would be useful to take a course in the College of Education to get a better sense of some current issues of concern in my intended field. This course on the achievement gap provided an excellent general introduction to some of the literature on this topic, which remains one of the most urgent and chronic issues in education today.

 

While the course content was extremely interesting to me, I found the class to be less than compelling. The course was large and the majority of the people there were only there because the course was required for their major. My peers were not particularly inspiring, and did not seem overly invested in the topic. The course was taught by a fresh PhD who mostly had experience teaching in K-12. Overall, the energy was low, there was limited dynamic class discussion, and the course seemed to move far too slow. 

 

Overall, this course was not what I had anticipated: I had been expecting a more rigorous and fast-paced course where we could discuss highly-complex topics in a sophisticated way among a community of people who were truly invested in solving these types of problems. While I did not get that experience, I did have the opportunity to gain some exposure to the research canon surrounding this issue and got some insight into the complexity of the problem, the causes, the way we frame this phenomenon, and the proposed solutions. It was definitely worthwhile and will hopeful provide a foundation for further work as I continue my studies in this field.