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The
Curriculum
During
Years One to Three in the Program, students take year-long Core Seminars
with other members of their Cohort, following the same course
sequence.
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Year One - Educational
Inquiry and Foundations
¨ Year Two - Learning,
Instruction, and Human Development
¨ Year Three -
Organizational Behavior, Leadership, and Policy Analysis
Year Two includes a course
on Community Service and Service Learning, dealing with the larger networks
of human services and support in which educational institutions are
embedded. Each student also completes a Specialization Area (a minimum of
four courses from URI and/or RIC), organized around the individual
student's own research interests. There is a required core of courses in
research methods, supplemented by more advanced work in methods applicable
to a student's Specialization Area and dissertation
topic.
Throughout
the Program, students participate in biweekly Field Research Seminars (EDP 641) that combine members from the 1st-year,
2nd-year, and 3rd-year cohorts.
Co-taught by professors from RIC and URI, these seminars provide a
forum for students to present their evolving research areas, questions, and
methodologies. Feedback and
discussion help to develop each presenter's research ideas--en route to the
dissertations--while also sharpening the research tools of other members of
the seminar.
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A
defining feature of this Ph.D. Program is the premium placed on research
training. Potential applicants
should be aware of the central importance of this research training to
the Program's mission, as reflected in its guiding tenets.
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1. Educational
improvement and reform are extremely complex processes. They will be more
successful if guided by thoughtful, rigorous research.
2. Accordingly,
graduates of the Program must be voracious and discriminating consumers of research
that has addressed the assumptions, structures, and impact of America’s
educational institutions and practices.
3. Guided by this
research, they must be prepared to design alternative approaches and
programs, then evaluate them in fine-grained ways that will contribute to
the systematic improvement of education.
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