Online MA in Educational Leadership

Acknowledging the reality that our students may face or have faced war, poverty, abuse, neglect, chronic illness, loss of a loved one, drug addiction, or any other number of negative experiences in their K–12 years, this course will challenge you to address issues surrounding trauma and social-emotional learning in public schools to develop a trauma-informed approach to educational leadership.

In this course, you will examine moral and ethical questions in order to critique conceptions of community, equity, diversity, and democracy, and you will consider the moral and ethical implications of programs and policies as you develop your own strategic institutional vision in a larger context of predominant theoretical and philosophical approaches.

Educational change making is most effective when community participants are drawn into and included in the action inquiry process. In this course, you will learn the why, what, and how of Participatory Action Research (PAR), a mode of inquiry that respects the situated knowledge of local informants to equalize power relationships between the researcher and the researched.

In this course, you will address the realities of curricular planning in a system that privileges standards and testing above holistic intellectual and social emotional development. Through extensive reflection, readings, analysis, observation, and collaborative discussion, you will strategize new ways to design teaching so that it reaches the whole student, increasing their options in school and after.

In this course, you will draw from theorists including John Dewey, Paulo Freire, and Sylvia Ashton-Warner to unpack global educational trends in the context of today’s shifting technological and political paradigms. Engaging in a think tank with fellow professionals, you will then apply learnings to construct your own ideal 21st-century learning environment.

Grounded in constructivist philosophy, this course will draw connections between youth culture, popular culture, and “liberal” learning while examining the interconnectedness of Hip Hop and community. Because of its ubiquitous academic reach, Hip Hop has emerged in primary, secondary, and postsecondary classrooms as both liberatory and culturally relevant pedagogy. Students will examine educational theories, Hip Hop instructional strategies and their applications in the modern day classroom. Special focus will be placed on critical pedagogies that emphasize education, social capital, race, and ethnicity.

According to the most recent NCES teacher attrition survey, approximately 16 percent of teachers change schools or leave the profession each year. In this course, you will learn how the handling of evaluations, feedback, and professional development can create or destroy the culture of a school, and you will activate the necessary skills to become an effective human resource manager.

Evaluation is a stalwart of education, but it is not an unbiased process. In this course, you will learn to approach evaluation as a tool for framing pain points and devising interventions, while addressing the messy and ambiguous problems you might encounter in a system with numerous stakeholders.

Premised on the belief that the issues confronting urban schools are inextricably linked to key issues in society, this course will prepare you to articulate your own mission and purpose as a leader in this setting, examining the complex challenges found in urban schools in the context of social, political, and economic conditions at the local, regional, and national levels.

With an underlying philosophy that strong leaders are by nature reflective, this culminating experience will ask you to create a professional portfolio based on self-assessment, personal goal setting, and discoveries made throughout your graduate studies. You will demonstrate your readiness to embrace lifelong professional development by articulating your vision for education and your placement within that vision.