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The University of British Columbia
- a place of mind
- Faculty of Education
- Department of Educational Studies
The EdD in Educational Leadership and Policy provides advanced preparation for education practitioners with leadership and policy responsibilities in both formal and nonformal settings. These settings include, among many others, the postsecondary sector, business and health organizations, unions and community groups as well as the K–12 school system.
The program is grounded in the belief that it is important for participants to engage in scholarly discourse about understanding, critiquing and improving practice in educational settings. It consists of six required seminars, two elective courses, a comprehensive examination and a dissertation. While the program addresses Canadian educational issues and perspectives in a global context, it is the particular settings and leadership or policy responsibilities of the participants which is the starting point of seminars. The expertise of qualified adjunct faculty from related professional fields supplements that of the regular departmental faculty.
The structural features of the program are as follows:
Students are admitted in groups of 10–12 and proceed through the program as a cohort. It is possible to complete program requirements in three years although most students take longer. The first cohort began the program in July 1997; the second cohort began the program in July 1998; the third in July 2000; the fourth in July 2001; the fifth in July 2003; the sixth in July 2004; the seventh cohort began in July 2006; the eighth cohort began in July 2007. The ninth cohort began the program in July 2009. The tenth cohort began the program in July 2011. The eleventh cohort will begin in July 2012. Please see application deadlines for information on the next intake for this program.
Required coursework is offered in seminars that take into account the continuing professional responsibilities of those educators the program is designed to attract. Seminars during the Summer Session are scheduled on campus in six-week blocks during July and August. Winter Session runs from September to April and is divided in two terms. Term 1 is from September to December and Term 2 from January to April. Winter Session seminars normally meet four times each term on Fridays from 5–9 p.m. and Saturdays from 8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
Each cohort attends classes on campus for two consecutive Summer Sessions (July to mid-August) and two consecutive Winter Sessions (September to early April). Coursework consists of 18 credits of required seminars and 6 credits of elective courses, chosen in consultation with a cohort advisory committee to either broaden the student’s academic background or to contribute directly to the development of the proposal for his or her research project. During the Winter Session, a limited number of elective courses may be available in the weekend-only format described above. Students who are able to attend more conventionally scheduled courses on campus will have a broader selection of electives and are encouraged to consider courses anywhere in the university that are relevant to their professional responsibilities. With prior approval, electives may also be taken at other universities or completed via directed studies and the Web.
Required seminars and elective courses are typically 3 credits each. The schedule of required and elective courses for the cohort beginning in July, is as follows:
First Year Doctoral Seminar (EDST 601). This seminar begins the cohort’s exploration and critique of their own practice in the light of issues, problems and concepts which will be important throughout the program—including education, leadership, ethics, policy, and practice—and the relationships among them.
Ethics in Educational Leadership EDST 593A (971). This seminar focuses on understanding and addressing ethical problems drawn from the students’ own practice. Ethical theories and forms of ethical analysis are applied to these problems to develop morally defensible responses.
Research 1 (EDST 508). This seminar focuses on what it means to conduct research in and on educational practice. Research paradigms, epistemological debates and their methodological implications are discussed. A variety of completed EdD research projects are analyzed.
The Social Context of Educational Policy (EDST 577). This seminar explores the nature of educational policy in relation to its social context. It includes policy issues drawn from the students’ own worlds of practice.
Research 2 (EDST 508). The purpose of this seminar is to help students develop the methodological expertise needed to carry out their research projects. Students will learn how to select and apply various research tools and techniques commonly used in the study of educational practice.
Elective # 1. Selected by students in consultation with the Cohort Advisory Committee.
Elective # 2. Selected by students in consultation with the Cohort Advisory Committee.
Doctoral Seminar (EDST 602). This final seminar focuses on reviewing and integrating concepts that are central to the program and relating these understandings to practice in preparation for the comprehensive examination and thesis research.
A comprehensive examination is required following the 2013 Winter Session.
During each summer session, students meet with a Cohort Advisory Committee the members of which respond to questions, offer advice about elective courses, suggest other faculty whom students should meet to discuss research ideas and help with other issues related to the program. Once a student decides the focus of his or her research, a Research Supervisory Committee is formed which then takes responsibility for supervising the student through to program completion.
The EdD dissertation is the report of a research project in which the student has intensively studied a problem or set of circumstances in his or her practice. The research is developed under the supervision of a committee which may include (with approval) a senior and appropriately qualified practitioner from a relevant area of education. One part of the dissertation may take the form of a document (or its equivalent in a non-print medium) of the kind commonly used in the field, such as a policy handbook or policy document, an action plan, a white paper, a curriculum or project design, a program evaluation, an institutional reorganization, a community development prospectus, or any other relevant innovative undertaking. If this is the case, the candidate must also provide, as part of the dissertation, documentation sufficient to allow others to follow the line of reasoning and evaluate the originality, usefulness, and credibility of the work.
Evaluation of the dissertation will be based on both academic and professional norms. The former include, for example, the coherence and integrity of the argument, the adequacy of the research base, the quality of the analysis, and interpretation of relevant conceptual and theoretical work. The latter include the educational impact of the work, the level of insight and imagination applied to the issues being dealt with, the sensitivity to historical and local circumstances, and the feasibility and requisite support for recommendations.
All EdD students prepare a dissertation research proposal, the format and substance of which is established in consultation with the student’s Research Supervisory Committee. The proposal is developed as early in the student’s program as possible, but no later than the end of the second year.
Coursework and other requirements are scheduled so that students can complete the program in three years from initial registration. It should be noted, however, that most students may take longer than this. A student who, by reason of illness or altered personal circumstances, is granted leave from the program and is therefore unable to proceed with his or her cohort, will be able to complete required courses with the following cohort.
Two aspects of the EdD program affect the way its courses are designed and taught: the purpose of the program and the nature of its students. The purpose of the program is to engage students in the advanced study of educational leadership and policy in order that they can both critique and improve their own practice. It is this focus on practice—studying practice, trying to understand practice, being constructively critical of practice, improving one’s practice—that primarily distinguishes the program from more traditional doctoral programs whose aim is to prepare people for scholarship and the extension of knowledge.
The students will be successful mid-career professionals who are actively (and, we assume, strenuously) engaged in the practice of educational leadership or policy decision making or both. Moreover, they will continue to be employed at these tasks while they are undertaking the program.
It follows that classes need to be conducted in such a way that students can be thoughtful about practice and introspective about their own practice, and that the jobs the students hold can furnish ample material about “real” practice for this thoughtfulness and introspection to occur, and to occur, moreover, with high relevance to the participants’ own jobs and careers.
Two assumptions seem warranted about the readiness of the EdD students to engage in critical reflection on practice: In their employment, such people have found themselves so frequently occupied with the need to deal with immediate issues, problems and crises that they have had little time for thinking about practice in general and their own practice in particular; they have had little time for what has been called “reflection” or introspection; they will welcome the opportunity through the program to develop ways of doing these things.
These students can benefit from the enrichment of their conceptual resources which comes from being “reflective,” or introspective, about their own practice, and analytical about the concept of practice itself.
These program features, corollaries and assumptions carry a number of implications for the way instructors should design and conduct courses. Instructors should recognize and respect the professional experience of the students. In matters of knowing at least one kind of practice, it may well be that the student is the expert and the instructor the novice.
Instructors need to be clear for themselves about what their own substantive expertise consists of, and they need to have thought carefully about its relevance to the interests and experience of the students.
The overall aims of each course need to be made clear at the outset, as do the reasons for these aims, for the students are likely to be people who are disinclined to put energy into an activity whose purpose they do not understand and subscribe to.
The design of each class session should incorporate and critically examine both (i) participants’ experience and knowledge, and (ii) knowledge and conceptual structures generated by relevant academic study and research. Moreover, it should encourage active and critical reflection on the relationship of each to the other.
The instructor will act as facilitator as much as (or sometimes more than) teacher of substantive material.
In addition to tuition, EdD students are subject to other fees paid by all UBC graduate students to support various student services. The University reserves the right to change tuition and fees without notice.
To get the most up-to-date listing of tuition and fees, consult the Fees Section of the current University Calendar online. Additional costs beyond these fees may include travel, accommodation and meals for those who live on campus during the Summer Session and who attend Winter Session classes from outside the Lower Mainland.
Up to five EdD Leadership Awards are available annually for students in each EdD cohort. The value of these awards ranges from $1,500 to $2,000 per year. Awards are applied to the student’s tuition account. The purpose of these awards is to recognize the academic and professional accomplishments of students in the program and to ease the financial burden of participating in the program for those who are less financially secure.
All those admitted to the program will receive application forms and instructions for the EdD Leadership Awards.
Below are some questions that have been raised by those interested in the EdD program, along with our answers. If you have a question that is not included and would like an answer, please contact Dr. Garnet Grosjean.
A 1. The program is designed primarily for people who are currently working and relies on the workplace as an important source of program content and as a site for carrying out the research project. Courses and other program requirements are scheduled in a manner that encourages reciprocation between the workplace and the program. This important feature of the program would be compromised if students did not have a place of work to apply learning. Moreover, three years is considered the minimum time required to complete the program. We are always very prepared, however, to discuss individual circumstances which depart from the norm.
A 2. Yes, provided that you maintain links with your workplace during your leave so that coursework can be related to your practice. During the year of your leave you will be encouraged to complete all the elective courses in your program. These courses will be identified in consultation with the Cohort Advisory Committee the members of which will help you determine appropriate courses.
A 3. No. Current university policies discourage students from taking courses prior to beginning a graduate program that they wish to have applied to that program. Special sections of required courses are offered for students in the EdD program, so even though these courses may be offered at other times, it is important to take required courses with other members of your cohort.
A 4. Yes, but remember that maintaining links with your workplace is an essential element of this program, especially in completing the research project. A leave during the second year of the program would allow you to complete your elective courses during that year and to focus your energy on the development of the project proposal. You may even be able to make substantial progress on the project before returning to work. A leave during the third year of the program would allow you to devote your full attention to the research project, but remember that it will be necessary to maintain links with your workplace in order to complete it.
A 5. No. Students do encounter a wide range of circumstance that may prevent them from completing the program with their cohort. Assuming that this happened during the first two years of the program, you would apply for a one-year leave from the program, paying the current on-leave fee listed in the University Calendar. On your return to study, you could take elective courses or work on the development of your research proposal until you were able to join the next cohort. The university’s on-leave regulations for graduate students apply to all students in the EdD program.
A 6. No. You should apply for admission to the program in the year preceding the year you wish to begin the program.
A 7. It makes sense to have your CEO involved with the project because it will be related to your workplace, but the supervisor of the doctoral project must be someone who has a UBC faculty appointment and is approved for doctoral student supervision. Qualified senior practitioners—like your CEO—may serve as members of EdD research supervisory committees with the approval of the Dean, Faculty of Graduate Studies.
A 8. No. We consider the two six-week summer sessions to be very important for developing and maintaining relationships within the cohort, for meeting potential committee members, for participating in various seminars and social events, and for using library and other university resources. Even if you live and work in the Vancouver area, we consider it very important that you arrange your work and family obligations so that you can participate as fully as possible during the summers.
A 9. The EdD is a market-priced professional program which means that tuition is based, in part, on what is charged by similar doctoral-level programs designed for practicing professional educators. The effect of this is that tuition covers a higher proportion of actual program costs than is the case with the PhD program, which is subsidized to a much greater extent than is the EdD.
A 10. This program is designed for experienced professional educators who are regarded as key members of the organizations for which they work. It is not possible to list all the “positions” that would qualify someone for the program, nor is it possible to list all the types of organizations in which people are engaged in the design, delivery and administration of educational activities. Following, though, are some examples of the kinds of positions and settings that we had in mind as we developed this program:
School principals and superintendents.
Leaders in professional associations and societies.
College and university deans and department heads.
Program directors in schools and continuing education divisions.
Directors of staff development, human resource development or training.
“Middle managers” with primary responsibility for education or training.
Classroom educators with policy or leadership responsibilities.
Experienced educational consultants working in private or public sector organizations.
Approved at Department Meeting - March 19, 1998; Revised July 13, 1999
“The EdD in Educational Leadership and Policy is centrally concerned with educational practice. It assumes that students and faculty will contribute broad knowledge from diverse backgrounds to scholarly dialogue about theory, practice and the complex interrelationship between the two.” Special attention is given to the program’s five key topics: education, leadership, ethics, research, and policy. While some courses will emphasize particular topics at various times during the program, the entire program is meant to be an integrated dialogue. The comprehensive examination is therefore intended as an opportunity for students to demonstrate publicly the knowledge and understanding they have developed in the program and how they have integrated this into their practice as educational leaders.
Up to four EdD Leadership Awards are available annually for students in each EdD cohort. The value of these awards ranges from $1,500 to $2,000 per year. Awards are applied to the student’s tuition account. The purpose of these awards is to recognize the academic and professional accomplishments of students in the program and to ease the financial burden of participating in the program for those who are less financially secure.
All those admitted to the program will receive application forms and instructions for the EdD Leadership Awards.
Priority will be given to applicants
New and continuing students who wish to be considered for an EdD Award should complete an application form and provide all supporting materials to the EdD Program Secretary, Department of Educational Studies, by April 30. Application forms should be accompanied by a transcript of all graduate work completed and a statement (2 pages maximum) that addresses each of the above criteria.
For more information about this program, the department and admission procedures can be found at www.edst.educ.ubc.ca or by contacting:
Department of Educational Studies
Faculty of Education
The University of British Columbia
2125 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4
Tel: 604.822.6647
Fax: 604.822.4244
Email: grad.edst@ubc.ca
or
Dr. Garnet Grosjean, Academic Coordinator
Tel: 604.822.4553
Email: garnet.grosjean@ubc.ca
or
Dr. Kjell Rubenson, Management Committee
Tel: 604.822.4406
Email: kjell.rubenson@ubc.ca
