Natasha Levinson, Ph.D.

I received my Doctorate in Educational Policy Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I have been teaching at Kent State since 1997. I teach graduate courses in philosophy of education, with an emphasis on normative political philosophy, professional ethics and constitutional considerations in education.  My courses include Classics in Philosophy of Education, Contemporary Readings in Philosophy of Education, Great Ideas in Education (which explores one great idea each time, e.g. political toleration; justice in education, etc) and a special topics seminar on Schooling and Religious Pluralism in the U.S.  In addition, I teach the Proseminar in Cultural Foundations, a course that explores the emergence of the field of social foundations of education in relation to the various "disciplines of education" (history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology), and introduces new doctoral students to the challenges and possibilities of the field. I also teach Foundational Approaches to Research, one of the 4 required research courses for CF doctoral students. I teach a master's level course in ethics in education and the human services which is occasionally offered on-line. At the undergraduate level, I teach a few sections of "Education in a Democratic Society" each year. This course, which is periodically offered on-line, explores the development of public schools and examines the challenges of teaching in a time when schools have never been asked to do quite so much in quite so distrustful a climate. My work tends to focus on educational concerns in the U.S., but I was born and raised in South Africa, and I teach a section of Education in a Democratic Society that travels to Ireland every other year. I am told that I bring an international perspective to my teaching, through the readings I assign and my own experiences as an immigrant to this country.