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The University of British Columbia
- a place of mind
- Faculty of Education
- Department of Educational Studies
The Educational Administration and Leadership Program (EDAL) is a graduate program for students who aspire to be leaders in a wide array of formal and informal educational settings. The EDAL program offers both MA and MEd options. It aims to engage students in learning that will help them understand, critique, and improve their educational practice to better serve children, communities, and the wider society.
Graduates will be prepared to provide leadership as educators, administrators and facilitators of educational change within schools and communities.
We approach educational leadership as a situated ethical practice that extends the boundaries of schooling into the community by engaging with social justice issues. Educational leaders engage with multiple constituencies holding conflicting social, political and cultural claims regarding the aims of education in a democratic and pluralist society. We seek candidates who care about these issues, understand the potential of education in fostering personal development and citizenship in a democratic and multicultural society, and who want to positively influence teaching, learning and the public space in which education operates.
As a community of scholars and practitioners, we come from different disciplinary traditions (philosophy, law, educational administration and management, organizational studies, sociology, policy studies, media studies, Indigenous education). We bring to the Program an engagement with education undertaken in national and cultural settings in different regions of the world (South East and Western Asia, North America and the Pacific). We believe that this diversity enriches our teaching and exposes students to both Canadian and international experiences and approaches in the field of educational leadership.
The EDAL Program is known for its ability to generate student professional growth. It challenges established assumptions and offers critical perspectives on education and society. The Program has a distinctive Canadian content and engages with a wide array of educational initiatives across British Columbia and Canada.
Faculty members take pride in fostering student intellectual growth and in promoting student welfare. We ask much of our students and give much in return. The Program has been operating for over 40 years and has over 800 graduates, many of whom occupy strategic educational roles in schools, school districts, non-governmental organizations and in other community settings.
A focus on education and educational leadership rather than “training” gives our program a special character.
“The University of British Columbia, aspiring to be one of the world’s best universities, will prepare students to become exceptional global citizens, promote the values of a civil and sustainable society, and conduct outstanding research to serve the people of British Columbia, Canada and the world.”
The University of British Columbia, TREK 2010.
“Our mission is to advance education’s role in the well-being of people and communities.”
Faculty of Education, Mission Statement, 2005.
“Educational leadership is the distinctive and integrating feature of the EDAL program. ‘Education’ and ‘leadership’ have powerful meanings. When they are linked a new connotation is created that emphasizes the centrality of education to the pursuit of the good life. We believe that Educational Leadership is a powerful conduit for a socially just and equitable education in a democratic society. As a community of scholars and practitioners, we strive to improve, sustain, and renew the educational opportunities of all citizens in fair and just ways. We are committed to forms of educational praxis that integrate research and scholarship into sustainable organizational improvements of schools and other educational settings operating in a variety of contexts and serving a diverse citizenry.”
“As members of the Educational Administration and Leadership Program we aspire to provide our students with knowledge, skills and understandings that equip them to work successfully in diverse leadership roles across complex educational and schooling contexts and exercise their professional judgment in ways which recognize and promote the values of a civil, democratic, multicultural and sustainable society, the empowerment of individuals and the wellbeing of communities.”
Please note new MA course requirements do not apply to current EDST MA students. These requirements take effect for new MA students who will begin their studies in September 2012. Course requirements for current master’s students are listed in the program worksheets.
UBC offers many interesting courses that are directly concerned with the interests of educational leaders and others that address a broad range of issues facing educators today. Here is information about courses that are part of the Educational Administration and Leadership (EDAL) Program. Each is valued at three credits (semester hours) (Total program = 30 credit hours).
Please note that EDST 508 and 565 are omnibus numbers.
EDST 532: Leadership in Educational Organizations
Explores various conceptions and understandings of leadership from classical writings, through traditional leadership studies, to more post-modern conceptions. Students consider the role of objectivity, research, ethics, and values as they refine their personal approach to educational leadership.
EDST 581: Leadership, Administration and the Aims of Education
This course focuses on the particular responsibilities of Canadian schools and especially education. Students are expected to articulate their own conceptions of education and apply these conceptions to various aspects of schooling including teaching, leadership and administration
EDST 582: The Study of Organization in the Educational Context
Classical and emerging perspectives on organizations. Different ways in which schools may be conceived and be administered. Instructional strategies include seminars, discussions, hands-on activities and simulations. Application of knowledge to organizations within which students work.
EDST 501: Research Traditions in Educational Administration
Permits students to become informed consumers of research and to ask fundamental questions regarding claims to knowledge. Incorporates the development of strong analytic skills and the exercise at synthesizing skills needed both in the program and as educational leaders.
EDST 508: Review of Research in Education
This course is designed to assist students to write their graduating paper by introducing them to various methods of inquiry, offering peer support and consultation, completing any required ethics applications, and by working through various issues associated with writing a research paper.
EDST 553: Group Inquiry in Educational Administration (Capstone Project)
Team projects devoted to a substantial issue in educational administration. Students develop important research, analytic and synthetic skills. Use of data-gathering techniques and the writing of a research report.
EDST 550: The Role of the School Principal
Concerned with understanding the practice of school leadership. The work of the principal is seen through various lenses: managerial, political and educational. Students are encouraged to integrate these views into their own conception of practice.
EDST 551 : Personnel Administration in Education
An overview of staffing issues such as recruitment, placement, transfer, dismissal, appeal procedures and bargaining practices. Performance evaluation techniques. Motivation of personnel from various perspectives. Issues and cases in staff development.
EDST 508: Seminar on Educational Leadership in the BC Context
This course may only be taken in conjunction with full participation in the UBC/BCPVPA Short Course offered each summer. It provides a structured opportunity to reflect in more depth on the issues raised in the Short Course and gives students an opportunity to develop a project based on their practice.
NOTE: Students pay the regular UBC course fees as well as the fee for the Short Course.
EDST 517: Improvement of Instruction through Supervision
Introduction to the philosophy and practice of supervision. Examination of literature, videotapes, and classroom teaching. Discussion and practice of both formative and summative evaluation. The supervision cycle is studied and practiced. Students analyze teaching and are made aware of relevant political considerations.
EDST 531: Politics of Educational Governance
Overview of issues associated with power, influence, authority, and control in education. A review of conflict and interest groups in education based on recent actions. Micropolitics at the school level, district and board level politics, and influences of politics at the provincial level. Case studies on the politics of innovation.
EDST 548: Teacher Unions and Education
This course examines teacher unionism and labour-management relations in education within a North American historical context, within the context of the broader union movement in Canada, and within the broader economic, social, and political context nationally and globally. Teacher unions are presented as complex organizations that represent a variety of intersecting interests related to teachers’ roles as employees, professionals, and concerned citizens.
EDST 554: Administration and Educational Policy
Development of the knowledge and skills useful to the educational administrator in policy development, implementation, and analysis. Students consider ethical dimensions, formulate policies and update policy manuals, and learn processes for policy implementation. Guest lecturers and use of a journal.
EDST 555 : Educational Finance
Covers an understanding of how budgets are raised, allocated, and spent for K–12 education in BC. Addresses the principles of finance and applies them to a variety of problems such as budgeting, staffing and fund-raising. The impacts of reforms such as decentralization are discussed. Guest speakers offer differing points of view on relevant issues.
EDST 556 : Leadership and Administration of the Educational Programs
Offers students an opportunity to explore issues related to the administration of a school-wide educational program in the context of issues of equity, excellence, and social justice. Students investigate research and popular opinion related to such topics as grouping and tracking, assessment, teaching and learning styles, multiculturalism, and ESL instruction.
EDST 557: Professional Ethics for School Leaders
In this course we will draw upon readings in ethics and upon our own professional experience to address three broad, interrelated questions. The first question, which is the focus of the course, concerns ethical decision-making: How can we develop our capacity for sound professional judgment on issues with ethical or moral dimensions? The second question concerns moral leadership: How can we contribute to the creation and flourishing of ethical school communities? The third question concerns moral pluralism: How should we understand and work with conflicting points of view on fundamental moral issues
EDST 552: School Law
Introduction to basic legal concepts and terminology. Students develop an awareness of the statute law and case law that pertains to education in BC. They focus on the information needed for legal action, but not on detailed legal rules. Topics include rights, special education, liability for accidents, crime, and copyright.
EDST 561: Practicum Simulation of School Leadership and Administration
Aimed at the improvement of administrators’ decision-making and communication skills, this course presents problems that elementary and secondary principals face. Using a critical strategies format with a considerable number of case studies, students’ insights and understandings of school organizations are increased.
EDST 565: Alternative Programs and Independent Schools
Students examine in depth the challenges and issues concerning mission, governance, leadership, curricular focus, funding, staffing, parental roles, and accountability. Debates, visiting speakers, presentations and critiques are used to compare and contrast both public alternatives and independent programs.
EDST 565: Organizational Learning in Education
This course aims to develop understanding and basic skills relating to the engagement of organizational members in collaborative incremental and transformational learning and change. Although the emphasis is on public schools, the theory and processes discussed are broadly applicable to a variety of other organizations.
EDST 565: Identity and Power in Work Organizations
This course will explore issues of identity and power as they apply across a variety of organizations, including K–12 schools, post-secondary education, and business. Identity is defined and examined using a variety of theoretical lenses. The central questions addressed in the course are: How do individuals come to identify, disidentify, or underidentify with organizations in which they work, and how is this process influenced by the way management treats employees, by organizational policies and practices, and by external policies that affect the organization? The course aims to develop understanding related to processes of engaging organizational learning in collaborative, incremental, and transformative learning and change.
EDST 579: School-Community Relations
The course addresses the social, political, and economic forces impacting school-community relations and the role played by educational leadership in this regard.
EDST 580: Directed Study
A student links up with a professor and investigates a problem of special interest that is not covered in depth in the course work. Some problems may be selected from the student’s place of work. The student and professor maintain contact by meeting, telephone, faxes, and e-mail. Registration is by manual methods, not on line.
EDST 590: Graduating Paper
An opportunity to focus on an administrative problem in depth that is of particular interest to the student. Often involves assembling the relevant knowledge, collecting information from the student’s school district, and submitting the results to the student’s employer. The paper may take many forms, including original research, critical literature review, a case analysis, or a proposal for educational policy.
EDST 598: Field Experience
Individually tailored, this is an opportunity to spend time shadowing an educator in a school, district office, or other workplace usually during three full-time weeks in May. Students complete a journal and assess their experience in light of what they have learned in their course work. Supervised jointly by a faculty member and an administrator. Most accessible to full-time students.
EDST 599: Master’s thesis
Consult the Handbook of Graduate Studies on the website of the Faculty of Graduate Studies at http://www.grad.ubc.ca
We are looking for students with academic strength and a track record of leadership. That means an average of at least 76% or a B+ in the 30 most recent credits, and at least 12 credits at a first-class level, as well as ample evidence of leadership among adults demonstrated in a school or community setting. Applicants are required to have at least three years of teaching experience in public, independent schools or in community settings engaged in education. Registration and application procedures are accessible online. You may begin your program in July or September.
To get application deadlines please go to our admissions page.
With the application forms, you are asked to submit a thoughtful statement of how you fit with the program, three strong letters of reference from educators or administrators who are in a position to comment on your work, your professional resumé, two official transcripts from each post-secondary institution attended, and an application fee.
While applicants must have completed a four year degree from a recognized post-secondary institution to be admitted to UBC and have a B+ average during the last two years of full time undergraduate study, an undergraduate degree in education is not a requirement for admission to EDAL. What is required is evidence of experience in the field of education, broadly conceived.
A TOEFL is required for students whose language is not English. Application can be submitted online at www.grad.ubc.ca/apply/online.
Alternatively, an application form is available from Roweena Bacchus, 604.822.5374 or edst.educ@ubc.ca.
For further information please contact:
Dr. Michelle Stack, Program Coordinator
Educational Administration and Leadership Program
University of British Columbia
2125 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4 Canada
Email: michelle.stack@ubc.ca
Phone: 604.822.9101
A Student Representative will be elected in this term.
Dr. Mark Aquash Oshogeeshik, Nimkeeg Indodem, Potawatomi/Ojibwe Anishinaabe is a member of the Council of Three Fires, Walpole Island First Nation in Ontario, Canada. Dr. Aquash’s background is a K–12 Art Teaching Specialist, Principal in schools in the United States and Canada and Director of Education Programs. His undergraduate (BFA) and graduate (MEd) degrees in education are from the University of Minnesota. He completed his Doctorate of Education (EdD) degree at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT) in Education Administration with the thesis title Decolonization and First Nations Control Of Education. Currently, Dr. Aquash is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at UBC and is Director of NITEP, the Aboriginal Teacher Education Program. Dr Aquash continues to maintain connections with First Nations and Tribal communities across North America and has lectured across Canada and the United States. His research interests include organization, leadership, technology and culture from the context of education.
Email: mark.aquash@ubc.ca
Website: edst.educ.ubc.ca/facultystaff/mark-aquash
Dr. David Coulter joined UBC in 1995 after working in Quebec and Manitoba schools for twenty-five years as a classroom teacher in both elementary and secondary schools, consultant, principal and superintendent. David’s research interests focus on understanding and fostering educational judgment with particular concerns for democratic dialogue and the imagination. He teaches the aims of education and educational action research courses in the master’s program in educational leadership and administration and the EdD in Educational Leadership and Policy.
Email: david.coulter@ubc.ca
Website: www.edst.educ.ubc.ca/facultystaff/david-coulter
Sample publications:
Dr. Hartej Gill was born in India in the state of Punjab. She is the daughter of Mohinder and Jiri Gill and the grand-daughter of Kishan & Naranjan Gill and Balwant & Pritam Sull who all come from a tradition of rice, sugarcane, date, wheat and vegetable farming in their respective villages of Fatehpur, Moranwali, Jindowal, and Palahi. Hartej’s education began at the Government Primary School in Moranwali (District of Hoshiar Pur). She has since worked in the North Vancouver School District (SD # 44) as an Elementary School Teacher in the English and French Immersion Programs and as Teacher-Librarian. In her last role, she worked as a Vice-Principal at Sherwood Park Elementary School. Hartej is particularly interested in Social Justice and Leadership and in using research to bridge the gap between theory, practice, and social activism. At the core of her work is the goal of provoking critical dialogues about identity, power, systemic oppression, colonialism, patriarchy and modernity. As a scholar-practitioner, she hopes to use her praxis as way of co-creating transformative and reciprocal relationships between universities, public schools, and the larger community.
Email: hartej.gill@ubc.ca
Website: www.edst.educ.ubc.ca/facultystaff/hartej-gill
Sample publications:
Dr. André Elias Mazawi worked as a French classroom teacher in private and public elementary and junior high schools. He specializes in the sociology of education with an interest in the relations between educational policies, school organization and educational opportunities. He is French editor and associate editor of the Canadian Journal of Higher Education and a member of the International Board of Editors for the Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies.
Email: andre.mazawi@ubc.ca
Website: www.edst.educ.ubc.ca/facultystaff/andré-elias-mazawi
Sample publications:
Dr. Wendy Poole is a former secondary school teacher and leader from Nova Scotia. She received a MEd from Mount Saint Vincent University and a PhD from Syracuse University. Her research interests include teacher unions and teacher union leadership, organizational learning and professional learning communities in education, identity in work organizations, and the impact of neo-liberal and neo-conservative policies on K–12 education. Dr. Poole teaches courses related to leadership and the aims of education, teacher unions and education, organizational learning, and identity and power in work organizations.
Email: wendy.poole@ubc.ca
Website: www.edst.educ.ubc.ca/facultystaff/wendy-poole
Sample publications:
Dr. Michelle Stack has a doctorate in Theory and Policy Studies in Educational Administration and Leadership, University of Toronto. Michelle’s interests are in the fields of media education, the impact of media on the educational policymaking process, and concepts of leadership, Participatory Action Research (PAR) with youth and media constructions of the “pathological” young person. She is also interested in analyzing the current move towards certification of school principals. She is currently working on two major research projects. The first involves collaborative video production between youth and educators. This project aims to look at media production as a tool for democratizing schools and media. The second project addresses the role of the media in educational policymaking in Canada. This research will facilitate the development of a theoretical framework in which to understand how the media and policymakers interact in the educational policy process, and how educational researchers and others do, or might, play a role in this process. Michelle teaches courses in policy, ethnography, anthropology and media studies. She developed two media courses concerned with media and policymaking, representations of educators in the media, engaging with the media and creating media.
Email: michelle.stack@ubcc.a
Website: www.edst.educ.ubc.ca/facultystaff/michelle-stack
Sample publications:
Dr. Daniel Vokey seeks to integrate eastern and western perspectives on the role of experience and intuition in making sound practical judgments. In his teaching and research, he draws from his academic background in philosophy, his professional career as an instructor and consultant in adventure-based experiential education, and his study and practice of Shambhala Buddhism. He teaches professional ethics courses for the Educational Administration and Leadership Program.
Email: daneil.vokey@ubc.ca
Website: www.edst.educ.ubc.ca/facultystaff/daniel-vokey
Sample publications:
Dr. P. Taylor Webb studies the concept of power as it relates to education policy and practice. He is interested in the current discontinuities between accountability policy and the realities of implementation, the formal and informal leadership roles within schools, and the ways educational power constructs categories of race, gender, and class.
Email: taylor.webb@ubc.ca
Website: www.edst.educ.ubc.ca/facultystaff/p-taylor-webb
Sample publications:
Program Secretary
Ms. Roweena Bacchus is the Program Secretary. She is a resource in helping you to navigate the campus and communicate with Program faculty. Roweena is interested in anti-racism and multiculturalism and their implications. She is a board member of ADAPP (The Association in Defense of the Azerbaijani Political Prisoners), a member of Amnesty International (Group 17, East Vancouver) and Chair of the Stop Violence Against Women campaign.
Email: roweena.bacchus@ubc.ca
Administrative Assistant
Mrs. Jeannie Young assists students with inquiries about UBC and communicates with applicants. She is responsible for the loaning and setting up of equipment. Jeannie was born in Vancouver’s Chinatown. She lives in Richmond with her husband, Gordon, and three children aged 16 to 24. She enjoys badminton, travelling, camping, trying out ethnic foods, sewing, and loves children’s literature (historical fiction).
Email: jeannie.young@ubc.ca
Graduate Program Assistant
Ms. Christine Adams sorts out any problems the students have while in their program, along with processing grant applications and answering questions from current and potential students. Her interests are card making, cross stitching and reading, mainly mystery novels, collecting tarot cards.
Email: grad.edst@ubc.ca
Cohort Manager
Mr. Don Lintott worked as a teacher and principal in elementary and secondary schools. He retired from the position of Deputy Superintendent of Schools in Richmond (SD #38) to come to UBC. As Adjunct Professor, he taught Education 420 to students preparing to become teachers in elementary and secondary schools as part of the Teacher Education Department. From September 1998 to August 2000 he served as Administrator in Residence in the EDAL Program and extended his interests in educational leadership and school organization. He taught courses in Education Law and Personnel Administration in Education. Don is currently EDAL’s Cohort Manager in four areas, North Shore, Vancouver, Richmond and Delta.
Email: don.lintott@ubc.ca
Sample professional commitments:
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. Michelle Stack, Program Coordinator
Email: michelle.stack@ubc.ca
Tel: 604.822.9101
