Education-Leadership, Foundations, and Policy

This course explores laws and policies that shape U.S. public school teaching and learning environments, covering Supreme Court cases and federal legislation. The course introduces legal principles and guidelines for fulfilling leadership duties and protecting the respective rights of student and teacher. Students will be prepared to make fair and ethical decisions, enhancing educational opportunities for all students.

This course gives students conceptual and philosophical frameworks for leading good instruction and creating conditions for teaching and learning in schools and districts. Students reflect on their own instructional filters and deepen understanding of what we know about effective teaching and learning. Considering various instructional issues, students learn to supervise and evaluate instruction, connecting supervision with professional growth.

This course equips educators with tools to lead continuous improvement aimed at advancing the academic success, engagement, and belonging of all children. Grounded in improvement science, the course introduces tools for systemic change and includes field-based application in P-12 teaching and leadership.

Examines how, as a team, school leaders analyze the relationship of the integration of technologies to teachers' beliefs & practices & to local school culture, structures, & policies. Students will evaluate factors critical for successful implementation of EdTech; identify & deconstruct the distributed leadership of EdTech in a school setting; & plan comprehensively for a system of practice to lead EdTech.

Leadership for Equity of Diverse Populations seeks to support special populations in schools. It proposes that effective leadership for all special student populations involves particular knowledge and requires a strong equity orientation.

This course introduces early-stage PhD students to education research and to academic and non-academic professional development through a speaker series, EHD faculty and alumni career panels, and guided discussions. Students engage with scholars within and beyond EHD, read and analyze research, attend talks, and explore a range of career pathways. The course emphasizes critical inquiry, peer learning, and preparation for future scholarly and professional work.

Graduate seminar on quantitative reasoning for education and youth: what can we responsibly claim from evidence, and what should we not? Students learn causal and quasi-experimental designs (RCTs, RD, DiD/event studies, CITS) and build reproducible R workflows for data management, visualization, and interpretation. Emphasis on claim discipline, validity threats, and decision-facing communication in dashboards, edtech, and AI-enabled analytics.

Problems of practice through systematic inquiry are the focus of this course. We explore the intersection of theory and practice with emphasis on the design of thoughtful, ethical inquiry about educational problems of practice. There is a co-requisite (EDLF 5301: Academic Writing for Practitioners that is focused exclusively on academic writing to address problems of practice).

Focus is given to Problems of Practice (POPs) through systematic quantitative inquiry, specifically focusing on survey processes, questions and strategies used to conduct meaningful inquiry in educational settings. The course begins with the process for survey development followed by basic statistical processes and procedures for organizing and analyzing data from surveys. A co-requisite for the class is EDLF 8386: Survey Lab of Practice.

This Lab of Practice complements EDLF 8385: Survey Inquiry. The Lab provides a structured opportunity to engage in survey work on a very small scale allowing for practicing the main ideas focused on in EDLF 8385: Survey Inquiry.

Explores problems of designing, conducting, and reporting evaluation research studies. Time is spent examining philosophies of science that underlie evaluation studies; conceptualizing a total evaluation study; planning for the use of time and resources in conducting an evaluation study; assembling the evidence for or against a particular proposition; analyzing costs; and learning how to avoid common pitfalls in working with clients and program participants to design and conduct an evaluation study.

Surveys selected major problems or issues facing contemporary American higher education.

This course explores relationships among educational values and vision, the definition of organizational problems, and the identification of relevant solutions. Approaches such as equity audit, appreciative inquiry, force-field analysis and root-cause analysis help students connect the identification and framing of priority issues with approaches to organizational decision-making that translate vision and values into organizational development.Prerequisite: Students in the (ExSel Ed.D. program)

Designed to give masters students experience conducting research in professional settings appropriate to their disciplines. Prerequisites: Permission of Advisor

For master's research, taken under the supervision of a thesis director.

Opportunities for experienced doctoral students to teach courses or partial courses at the University, or to supervise student teachers under the guidance of a faculty member. Opportunities are arranged by the students with the assistance of the sponsoring faculty member.

Ed.D. Research conducted under the guidance of capstone committee. 12 hours required for graduation. Permission of Instructor required.

Under close faculty guidance, students work on an area of interest not covered by the curriculum. A plan of study must be signed by the faculty sponsor and filed in the student's permanent file in the Office of Student Affairs. Prerequisite: Instructor permission.

Independent Research

Designed to give doctoral students experience conducting research in professional settings appropriate to their disciplines. Prerequisites: Advisor Permission Required.

Doctoral Dissertation Research completed under the guidance of dissertation committee. 12 hours is required for graduation. Permission of instructor required.