Educational Leadership

Program Mission Statement

To support the improvement of education through a variety of leadership roles, the College of Education and Human Services at the University of North Florida offers a program leading to the Doctor of Education (EdD) degree in educational leadership. The EdD program draws from a number of departments and other instructional resources of the university. The program consists of course work in interdisciplinary foundations, leadership, research methodologies, and a cognate (or minor) area.  

The completion of a dissertation is the capstone project of the degree program.

Student Learning Outcomes

Program Goal:

• Students will sufficiently progress towards dissertation and degree completion.
  
• In this operational outcome, faculty will focus on recruiting high quality candidates for admission.
  
• The program will focus on retaining currently enrolled doctoral students.

Knowledge of Literature of Discipline (req)

• Student learning is guided by these principles:
  Principle 1: Framed around questions of equity, ethic of care, and social justice to develop evolving strategies and approaches to complex problems of practice.
  Principle 2: Preparing scholarly practitioners who can construct and apply knowledge to make a positive difference in the lives of individuals, families, organizations, and communities.
  Principle 3: Providing opportunities for practitioners to develop and demonstrate collaboration and communication skills to work with diverse communities and to build partnerships.
  Principle 4: Engaging practitioners in their context of practice in inquiry-based activities that use multiple perspectives to develop authentic, innovative, results-oriented solutions and/or outcomes.
  Principle 5: Grounded in and designed to develop professional knowledge that integrates practitioner and research-based knowledge that links theory with systemic and systematic inquiry.
  Principle 6: Preparing leaders to be scholarly practitioners and leaders in education who can generate, develop, apply, and transform knowledge and practice.

Independent Research/ Professional Practice (req)

• The student understands and demonstrates competence around questions of equity, ethics, and social justice to bring about solutions to complex problems of practice.
• The student analyzes problems of practice and uses multiple frames to develop meaningful solutions

Professional Skills (opt)

• The student has developed and demonstrates collaboration and communication skills to work with diverse communities and to build partnerships.
• The student models and leads through the generation, transformation, and use of professional knowledge and practice.

Assessment Approaches

Beginning in 2019-2020, the Ed.D. in Educational Leadership program will require completion of a portfolio instead of a comprehensive examination.  Elements of the portfolio will be completed by the students, submitted, and evaluated by program faculty annually, beginning in August of Year 1 and continuing through graduation.  Each student will develop and submit his or her own electronic portfolio via Canvas following the guidelines supplied in this document.

Each portfolio is comprised of seven components, a Professional Leadership section and six Principles sections corresponding to the six guiding principles from Carnegie Project on the Educational Doctorate (CPED).  The CPED principles shaping this portfolio are that the Ed.D. program:

1. Is framed around questions of equity, ethics, and social justice to bring about solutions to complex problems of practice;
2. Prepares leaders who can construct and apply knowledge to make a positive difference in the lives of individuals, families, organizations, and communities;
3. Provides opportunities for candidates to develop and demonstrate collaboration and communication skills to work with diverse communities and to build partnerships;
4. Provides field-based opportunities to analyze problems of practice and use multiple frames to develop meaningful solutions;
5. Is grounded in and develops a professional knowledge base that integrates both practical and research knowledge, that links theory with systemic and systematic inquiry; and
6. Emphasizes the generation, transformation, and use of professional knowledge and practice.