Ed.D. Concentration in Curriculum, Technology & Higher Education

The Curriculum & Technology (CTHE) concentration consists of three core courses in educational leadership, five concentration courses, six elective courses in your specialization area, and 12 doctoral thesis credits. The coursework enables you to develop knowledge and skills in writing, presenting, scholarly analysis, organizational problem-solving and planning, action research, educational technology foundations, program evaluation, and doctoral thesis planning. Thus, your coursework covers a broad array of topics essential to effective education leadership.

For more on the coursework, follow these links:

The CTHE program is accredited through the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), which uses a performance-based assessment framework. As you work through the CTHE program, you will complete the following six performances.

(1) Problem Statement: Analytical Essay

At the beginning of the CTHE program, all students take the course EDUC 824: Effective Communication for Educational Leaders. In conjunction with this course, each student identifies an “organizational improvement problem,” develops evidence for their perspective, and formulates a problem statement and an analytical plan aimed at improvement. This assignment emphasizes the analytical tasks of developing a concise, relevant, and coherent problem statement. Its purpose is to help students begin thinking about projects and lines of inquiry they may pursue in subsequent courses related to their chosen problem. Later in the program, students can build upon this when they write their more formal EPP proposals.

(2) Curriculum Analysis: Curriculum Conspectus

Performance 2 involves EDUC 860 or 897 and your specialization courses. In EDUC 860 (Curriculum Theory with a K-12 emphasis) or 897 (Curriculum Inquiry emphasizing higher ed), all CTHE students are introduced to essential dimensions of curriculum, as the course of formative experience, including issues of identity, social discourses, meaning and authority, and the motivational significance of problematic situations for learning. In EDUC 860/897, students will develop a curriculum conspectus analyzing the essential dimensions of a problematic situation for curriculum design in a specific subject or specialization area. This conspectus (which might ideally contribute to development of the EPP, but which is not required to do so), will be evaluated by the EDUC 860/897 course instructor for how well the curriculum theory concepts are employed, and by the student’s advisor and/or specialization faculty for responsiveness to aspects of the problematic situation that are specific to the subject or specialization area. The advisor and/or specialization area faculty will determine the relative weight given to evaluations on the general curriculum and the area-specific components of the evaluation, as appropriate for each case.

(3) Standards-Based Educational Technology Framework

In the required course EDUC 818 (Educational Technology Foundations), all CTHE students learn to mine the educational technology knowledge base appropriate to their specialization, discover their foundations, create or adopt an appropriate set of standards, and create a Web site based on this framework. In the process, students determine the proper role of educational technology in their specialization, and the candidates determine how they may use technology in their doctoral thesis as described in performances 5 and 6 below. The resulting Web site based on this framework will probably become one of the appendices in the EPP. Moreover, this Web site may contain the EPP and its appendices, thereby serving to present the EPP as an electronic portfolio accessible over the Web.

(4) Evaluation Project

This is an authentic project in which candidates apply their knowledge of quantitative methods (EDUC 665 or 846), qualitative research (EDUC 850), and program evaluation (EDUC 863). In this evaluation project, candidates investigate a problem in their local school or workplace that has an impact on student learning or work performance. Candidates collect and analyze data intended to inform the design of their local organizational improvement plan. The project culminates in EDUC 863 in which it is submitted and assessed.

(5) EPP proposal

As the doctoral thesis, the Executive Position Paper (EPP) is the capstone project in the Doctor of Education program. Students work on their EPP proposal while taking EDUC 891 (Organizational Problem Analysis/Planning). Students form an EPP committee and write an EPP proposal for their EPP. It is intended that the evaluation project in performance 4 will inform the definition of the problem addressed in the EPP. For more on the process of forming the doctoral committee and proceeding to candidacy, follow this link to Beyond the Coursework.

(6) Executive Position Paper (EPP)

Students earn 12 credits of EDUC 969 (thesis) while completing their executive position paper. In addition to writing the executive position paper, students must present it in an oral defense attended by the members of their EPP committee and fellow doctoral students, all of whom are invited to attend each EPP defense. For more on the EPP, follow this link to the EPP Guidelines.