Educational Studies Program Our Accomplishments and Future Plans with the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate
OUR GOALS
Make all doctoral students' educational experiences more coherent - Provide a common knowledge base - Design institutional structures that allow for more consistency in student guidance, support, and access to research and teaching opportunities
STRATEGIES
More emphasis on common, coordinated experiences - Cohort of 1st year students take 4 core courses and a proseminar together - Four first-year Educational Studies core courses have been (re)designed in light of our goals: Foundations of Schooling, Foundations of Teaching and Learning, Qualitative esearch Methods, and Quantitative Research Methods - Engaged in extensive evaluation based on student feedback in focus group interviews and surveys for three years - Implemented a proseminar that attends to students’ practical, social, and intellectual needs, and that will serve as a site for articulating connections between the core courses
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Create a richer shared intellectual foundation among doctoral students early in the program to ensure the opportunity for more advanced work in students’ area(s) of specialization - Determine the number of new students accepted to our programs based on the availability of resources needed to support them throughout their program - Standardize the order in which core courses must be completed in order to build a more cohesive experience among first year doctoral students - Build coherence among the core courses by increasing collaboration among core faculty, using a cross-cutting theme, and providing opportunities for core faculty and students to interact during proseminars - Continuously seek feedback from students and faculty
QUESTIONS
Who are we educating- Researchers, practitioners, or both- Do these students need different curricular paths? - How much of the program should be similar for all students, and how much should be specialized? - How many semesters of research methods (and which ones, mixed methods?) should students be required to take?
FOCAL AREAS FOR 2006-2007
Design a system for providing opportunities for teaching and research apprenticeships - Continue to promote collaboration among core faculty - Design a common preliminary exam based on core coursework - Examine the specialization areas and consider their rationale and structure in light of our evolving conception of the doctorate - Consider strategies to address our students’ practical, social, and intellectual needs beyond their first year
IMPORTANT LESSONS LEARNED
Substantive change to the doctorate must be conceptualized as a long-term process, requiring persistence and continuous evaluation of efforts - Once we attended to structural details we could focus on more substantive matters - The mix of people on the committee matters: someone with authority, key stakeholders, doctoral students, neutral parties, and people willing and able to invest time into numerous tasks
