PreK–12 Education Administration and LeadershipCurriculum

This course examines the school community context in considering board policies and the development of working relationships with community members. Topics such as setting standards, understanding accountability roles, the impact of pressure groups, and working with formal and informal ideologies are discussed within the framework of the educational institution, the political environment, and the ultimate process of policy development.

Critical analysis of educational policy from social justice perspectives and application of effective political leadership practices to ensure equity for all constituencies.

Analysis of effective uses of technology in learning and the systemic structures necessary to ensure that technology practices result in effective learning for all learners.

Examines current trends in assessment and effective leadership practices to ensure accountability and inform continuous improvement.

This course will guide the Ed.D. candidate to examine and understand the role of the PreK-12 district administrator in the 21st Century with an emphasis on the role of the superintendent. Students will explore how the district-level administrator navigates the experiential factors of leadership, community and culture, governance, equity, employee development, and personal development.

This course will guide the EdD candidate to examine key legal issues that govern daily and long-range decisions for educational leaders.  The focus is on understanding State and federal laws and emphasizes analysis of key legal concepts. Students will examine trends in law and the initiation of educational law to positively influence educational institutions.

Decision-making is a constant for district-level administrators in the PreK-12 setting. This course focuses on various methods of researching, evaluating, planning, and communicating positive decisions for a PreK-12 school district while at the same time discussing supervision of district-level processes, programs, and entities.

This course is designed to assist students in developing the concept of using resources to realize educational goals in an ethical, practical and efficient manner for a school district, leveraging money and other resources for growth and change.

Successful employee relationships and district-level decisions affecting human resources in the local school district will be explored, especially those who fall under a collective bargaining agreement.

This course provides an introduction to action research and how it can be used to inform practice. Students focus on the action research process, potential research topics, preparing an annotated bibliography and considerations for designing a scholarly research project.

This course guides students through the processes of scholarly research design and human-subject research approval. Focus is placed on research methods, ethical standards for scholarly investigation, developing a theoretical framework and writing a literature review and research proposal.

Students are guided through the data collection stage of an ongoing scholarly research project. Focus is placed on data collection and analysis, data management and initial data analysis.

This course will guide the Ed.D. student through the Review of Related Literature stage of the Action Research Project.  Using advanced research strategies, students will complete their search of appropriate databases, read, and become familiar with the literature in order to identify relevant research and theory related to a specific topic.

Students are guided through the process of reporting an ongoing scholarly research project using a five-chapter format and reporting scholarly research to various audiences. Focus is placed on standards for scholarly writing, presentation of scholarly work and application of action research findings.

This course is a two semester internship with each intern working for an experienced mentor. The internship experience builds effective relationships through intrapersonal, interpersonal, and organizational development focused on communication. In addition, students are asked to examine leadership challenges of the present and future based on class learning and individual experiences. The internship provides the intern with real world experiences related to leadership at the highest levels.