Program Concentrations

Education Policy, Leadership, and Instructional Practice

Education Policy, Leadership, and Instructional Practice focuses on learning among children, adolescents, and adults and its connections to the organizations, institutions, and policy settings in which it occurs.This concentration focuses on the role that leaders, broadly defined, play in constructing, guiding, and improving learning in educational organizations.The purpose of this concentration is to develop researchers and practitioners with strong methodological and theoretical skills whose main interest is the development of knowledge useful to the improvement of learning in educational organizations. Graduates of this concentration will be distinguished by their ability to enhance conditions that support the learning of children, adolescents, and adults in educational organizations through the systematic application of research and theory to practice.

Human Development and Education

Human Development and Education focuses on development throughout the life span, from infancy through adulthood. Special consideration is given to how issues of cognitive, social and emotional development intersect with community and cultural contexts. The strengths of faculty and students include the following broad topics: language and literacy; mind, brain, and education; early childhood development; and children at risk. Graduates of the concentration will be distinguished by their ability to apply developmental research to address issues in education policy and practice.

Culture, Communities, and Education

Culture, Communities, and Education highlights a range of increasingly complex issues--from shifts in cultural practices and racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity to the implications of these shifts for human or social development and education. Central to the concentration is research on the factors that put children or youth at a disadvantage, and those assets--family, community, or cultural--that support high levels of academic, social, and moral development; healthy individuals; and effective schools.The concentration prepares students to investigate these issues from multiple levels--the individual level; the school level and the neighborhood/community level in which schools are embedded; and the national and international levels, where cross-cultural concerns, including globalization, immigration, multiculturalism, and citizenship, are of paramount importance.

Quantitative Policy Analysis in Education

Quantitative Policy Analysis in Education integrates three strands of coursework -- rigorous training in quantitative research methods, focused disciplinary study, and substantive study of educational institutions and policies--with a minimum of one intensive research apprenticeship.The combination of these three strands allows students to gain intellectual depth and breadth as they develop an independent research agenda.The concentration prepares students for research careers in academia and research institutes.

Higher Education

Higher Education prepares students who wish to better understand and influence the course of American higher education. Examining historical and contemporary issues in higher education, the curriculum focuses on leadership, administration, and governance; policymaking and decision making; planning and finance; and diversity. Graduates assume leadership positions as researchers, faculty members, administrators, and policy analysts in colleges and universities, research institutes, and state and federal organizations.

Urban Superintendents Program

Urban Superintendents Program is a concentration for people who wish to transform education by becoming superintendents of urban school systems. USP is a rigorous course of study designed for professionals who have worked in metropolitan school districts as teacher-leaders, school principals, or central office administrators. Unlike other concentrations, the program requires an accelerated course of study (12 months of coursework), an intensive sixmonth internship, and the research and writing of a qualifying paper and dissertation.