The doctoral program in the School of Teaching and Learning emphasizes education for scholarship and research. Regardless of where a person pursues a career - in research, in teacher education, in K-12 schools, in community education, government or elsewhere - a deep understanding of research and scholarship provides the foundations for innovative leadership and for addressing the needs of all our students, families, and communities. Our doctoral program is based on the premise that learningk, research, and scholarship occur within a community. Thus, our doctoral program emphasizes collaborating and contributing with others to the knowledge base that can ehlp people improve their lives.

In 2008, the faculty in the School of Teaching and Learning approved a new doctoral program. Some of the assumptions and goals of that new doctoral program are below.

Assumptions Regarding Learning Underlying Doctoral Study

• Doctoral students learn extant deep principles related to content areas and diverse epistemologies, and to the nature of the human condition through discussion of those deep principles.
• Doctoral students learn how to conceptualize issues and extant academic studies and they learn the language and literacy practices of their scholarly field(s), including their cultural and political meanings and embodiments, through the writing, presenting, and discussion of research within an academic setting.
• Doctoral students learn how to engage in educational research through research apprenticeships and their own independent but guided research.

Goals of Doctoral Education

We hope to provide our Ph.D. students with the following opportunities:

• To continue their growth as teachers and become excellent university teachers.
• To become thoughtful, careful researchers engaged in new areas of inquiry.
• To be experienced in communicating ideas, rethinking ideas, critiquing ideas in a thoughtful manner, and generating new perspectives on scholarship in collaboration with others.
• To have worked closely with experienced scholars in their areas of study, over time, and have generated close relationsihps that will continue beyond graduation.
• To participate in and become part of a community of learners that is diverse and that reflects global perspectives

Faculty Expectations of Doctoral Students

We expect our students to have accomplished the following minimum requirements as part of their program experiences:

• Writing and reviewing confernece proposals and delivering conference presentations.
• Authoring or co-authoring research, either independently or with a faculty mentor.
• Teaching university courses and teaching in university courses (with early mentorship by a faculty member).
• Participating in regular research seminar meetings.
• Developing a research relationship with at least one faculty member in the student’s area of study.
• All students should have a sustained and productive learning and research experience, under the guidance and supervision of a faculty member. The purpose is to provide a doctoral student with an opportunity to gain an in-depth theoretical and practical understanding of educational research through supervised participation in a research project apprenticeship. This may be fulfilled through activities completed as a Graduate Research Assistant, participation in a faculty led research group, contribution to a joing project with a faculty member, or other arrangements.