Educational Leadership Course Descriptions

Reviews research about leadership, with an emphasis on transformational leadership, creation and implementation of a vision; develops skills in how to identify, interact, and mobilize key community organizations and constituents with an emphasis on board relations. Will include examples of and introduction to important leaders in the field.

Presents key constructs from organizational theory that are critical to understanding, analyzing, and implementing organizational and systemic reform; discusses key measures of accountability used in California; provides case studies of district and college systemic reform efforts.

This course addresses key educational challenges facing leadership in the schools and community colleges.  It focuses on alternative strategies for addressing key leadership issues in providing educational quality and equity, and it draws on the perspectives of leadership from schools and community colleges in the Bay Area.

Reviews recent research on best practices for developing the academic skills of English Language Learners and students with low levels of literacy; includes curriculum and instruction issues at the administrative level, supervision of instruction and teacher evaluation, and approaches for implementing best practices.

Using the issues of teaching and learning of mathematics and science, students will study theories of learning and theories of student development to address the construction of curricula that is student and learning centered.

Qualitative research with implications for contextualizing theory, practice, and promoting educational change through transformative leadership; emphasizes qualitative research design, collection, analysis, representation, research ethics; includes auto-ethnography, arts-based approaches, practitioner inquiry, narrative inquiry, interviewing, memos and coding, document analysis. Course content, readings, and assignments place special emphasis on qualitative research as linked with race, class, dis/ability, indigenous knowledge, gender, and sexual orientation in educational contexts.

Reviews research on issues of structural inequality and education from contemporary and historical perspectives; emphasizes evidence-based data analysis, specifically quantitative analysis of data on equity and achievement gap in education; addresses quantitative methods, descriptive analysis, measurement issues, and research ethics.

This course is designed to give students access to theories and grounded research that critique some prevailing strategies for improving urban education and others that explore promising strategies for transforming urban schools and colleges. Using social theory, students will gain a greater understanding of the various challenges and opportunities facing urban public education. Special attention will be given to explorations of pedagogical strategies that align theory and practice with a focus on achieving racial and social equity.

Reviews public policy processes and legislation related to schooling and education; public financing structures; schooling and school law, including fairness and justice, as well as common problems encountered in districts; special needs learner issues (i.e older adult learners and students with disabilities.)

Addresses the development of performance and institutional effectiveness measures, including California education accountability structures and introduction to program evaluation, incorporating quantitative and qualitative data.

Focuses on the skills needed to integrate the processes of planning, budgeting and financial management, utilizing data from performance accounting, measurement and evaluation systems.

Review of research in communication styles and techniques with emphasis on cross cultural communication; training in public communication techniques and analysis and improvement of communication styles; use of technology, communication with public media, and date presentation.

This research seminar, using the content of the two courses in fall 1, introduces new Ed.D. students to doctoral-level reading, writing, research skills, and research problems in the field of educational leadership.

The purpose of this course is for doctoral students to continue developing reading, writing and peer-review strategies, research skills, use of library resources, and researching problems in the field of education leadership. This course is a research seminar and will hone reading and writing strategies in the context of the two content courses offered during this Spring I semester

Students will present and receive critical feedback from practitioners in the field in which the student plans to conduct research. Students will apply the reading, writing and peer-review strategies, research skills, use of library resources they have developed during Fall I and Spring I.

Reviews qualitative and quantitative research methods; includes qualitative problem statements, data collection, and coding of qualitative data; addresses descriptive statistics, table statistics, correlation; students conduct applied small-scale study of a specific teaching and learning problem using quantitative and qualitative techniques.

Reviews research designs such as case studies, ethnographies, focus groups, survey research, correlational, experimental, and quasi-experimental; describes application of research designs to program evaluation; students develop methodology chapter of dissertation.

This seminar provides focused support for students in the initial stage of collecting data for the dissertation.

Independent student research leading to the completion of the doctoral dissertation; includes dissertation support seminar for sharing and critique of preliminary research findings; may be repeated for a total of 12 units.