SEDL - Strategic Educational Leadership

This course provides graduate students with a comprehensive overview of concepts and practices related to applying leadership in organizations with missions that include teaching-and-learning or other education functions. Serving as an introduction to the Strategic Educational Leadership Program, EDL 517 examines leadership practice across a range of organizational settings not limited to pre-K-12 or postsecondary institutions. The course surveys essential leadership responsibilities, including creating collective vision, fostering collaborative work climates, and leading organizations to achieve learning goals. Students use case studies, self-assessments, structured observations, and reflections to apply leadership concepts to their own work lives as emergent leaders. 

This course prepares students to strategically foster inclusive learning environments across diverse educational contexts. Grounded in an exploration of cultural, ethnic, and socio-economic dynamics, students will critically examine, gain skills, and develop dispositions for leadership practices that shape perceptions of equity and belonging and promote inclusive practices. In particular, candidates will understand how their actions impact perceptions about inclusiveness within such arenas as race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, religion, culture, and language.

This course prepares leadership candidates to strategically design and steward organizational resources to advance equitable learning and excellence. Candidates examine financial principles, talent management, resource-allocation theories, and case studies that analyze systemic challenges and complex leadership learning decisions. Emphasis is placed on vision-driven, ethical decision-making and culturally responsive leadership. Key competencies include budget, time management, and staffing. Through a major resource allocation project, candidates as learning leaders practice equity-centered, culturally responsive decision-making that aligns resources with improvement plans and learner needs.

This course prepares leadership candidates to strategically design and steward organizational resources to advance equitable learning and excellence. Candidates examine financial principles, talent management, resource-allocation theories, and case studies that analyze systemic challenges and complex leadership decisions. Emphasis is placed on vision-driven, ethical decision-making and culturally responsive leadership. Key competencies include budget, time management, and staffing. Through a major resource allocation project, candidates practice equity-centered, culturally responsive decision-making that aligns resources with improvement plans and student needs.

In this course candidates will be introduced to a systems approach to design, implement, and support transformational changes required for improved teaching and learning. Candidates will examine the conditions, competencies, culture, and context that affect organizational change as well as critical skills required to lead a change initiative. Additionally, candidates will have the opportunity to use the framework that works best for their individual study (e.g., Wagner, Bolman & Deal). Candidates will also identify the barriers to change and strategies to build capacity, develop high-functioning teams, improve decision-making, and assess progress to sustain change initiatives.

This course introduces doctoral candidates to models and processes used in learning and development, training, organizational learning, and learning impact evaluation within learning contexts. Students examine traditional and contemporary learning theories and frameworks as they relate to current challenges in professional learning environments. It explores macro- and micro-level perspectives on how knowledge is shaped within organizations and how learning pathways are designed to help learners meet specific goals. Students develop strategies to assess learning outcomes and determine the effectiveness of training and development efforts. Case studies provide opportunities to analyze contemporary problems and develop practical approaches to improving teaching, learning, training, and quality assessment.

This course is designed to support candidates through the dissertation writing process by focusing on scholarly writing. The course will emphasize developing good dissertation writing practices and finding scholarly voice. Candidates will use their own dissertations to apply course content.

This course is designed to support candidates through the dissertation writing process by focusing on scholarly writing. The course will emphasize developing good dissertation writing practices and finding scholarly voice. Candidates will use their own dissertations to apply course content.

This course is designed to support candidates through the dissertation writing process by focusing on scholarly writing. The course will emphasize developing good dissertation writing practices and finding scholarly voice. Candidates will use their own dissertations to apply course content.

This course is designed to support candidates through the dissertation writing process by focusing on scholarly writing. The course will emphasize developing good dissertation writing practices and finding scholarly voice. Candidates will use their own dissertations to apply course content.

This course is designed to support candidates through the dissertation writing process by focusing on scholarly writing. The course will emphasize developing good dissertation writing practices and finding scholarly voice. Candidates will use their own dissertations to apply course content.

This course is designed to support candidates through the dissertation writing process by focusing on scholarly writing. The course will emphasize developing good dissertation writing practices and finding scholarly voice. Candidates will use their own dissertations to apply course content.

This course engages students in the critical analysis of practitioner-focused research, emphasizing its role in educational decision-making across diverse learning environments. Students examine foundational theories, research paradigms, and methodological approaches, including quantitative and qualitative methods, while exploring the political dimensions of educational inquiry as they begin developing their dissertation methodology.

 

 

This doctoral course develops candidates' capacity to engage critically and ethically with research methodologies, data collection, and analysis as essential tools for strategic educational leadership and continuous improvement. Grounded in both theory and practice, candidates examine foundational research ethics alongside qualitative and quantitative methodologies, applying these frameworks to real-world problems of practice connected to their scholarly and professional contexts. Through active participation in their own data collection projects, sustained reflection, discussion, and structured assignments, candidates build practitioner-level knowledge of research design, evaluation, and data use while deepening their identity and self-awareness as emerging practitioner-scholars. The course supports candidates in articulating and justifying a rigorous research methodology connected to their individual dissertation focus and strategic leadership practice.

This course deepens students’ applied skills in analyzing, interpreting, and effectively presenting qualitative and quantitative data. Students examine data quality, including reliability, validity, and trustworthiness, to determine the strength of the conclusions. They practice communicating findings through clear written explanations and well-designed visual displays, including tables, figures, and graphs. Throughout the course, students develop the capacity to generate grounded insights from their analyses and present those insights in ways that enhance their effectiveness as strategic leaders who rely on evidence to guide decisions.

This course introduces strategic educational leaders to the study of policy change and its influence on learning across diverse educational systems. They examine how policies are conceptualized, shaped, implemented, and interpreted within complex political and organizational environments. It explores the dynamics of policy formation and the ways leaders navigate competing priorities within evolving systems. Through historical, political, legal, socioeconomic, and cultural lenses, candidates analyze how leaders, policymakers, and educators initiate, guide, adapt to, or resist policy change. Emphasis is placed on developing the strategic capacity to understand policy as an evolving force that shapes practice, equity, and educational outcomes.

This course explores the experience of teaching in undergraduate and graduate college settings, emphasizing core assumptions about helping students learn, reflecting critically on teaching practice, observing student learning experiences, and sustaining respect for students as adults. The course prompts educators to examine practices common to college teaching across disciplines and levels, including whole group instruction and learning, organizing groups, planning project-based assignments, teaching culturally diverse students, incorporating creativity into courses, co-teaching, and teaching in blended and online settings.

This course introduces postsecondary educators to instructional design as a process for systematically creating college courses and other formal learning experiences. Strategic leaders apply instructional design as a systems approach that analyzes learning situations, designs instructional plans with learning objectives, develops course structures, implements the course plan with selected methods of delivery, and evaluates the measurable impact of the course on learners’ knowledge and competencies. Learners read classic and contemporary curriculum and instructional design literature, analyze established course plans, and create an instructional design of a course in their own area of subject matter expertise.

This doctoral seminar addresses current and relevant topics related to education and strategic leadership. Students research, interpret, and analyze the social, political, and historical dimensions of education across a variety of contexts and organizations, as well as strategic leadership as it relates to practice, policy, and research. Topics are addressed from multiple viewpoints and theoretical positions, providing students with complex interpretations and application strategies. Students can take the seminar for up to 12 sh. Students must register for seminars on different topics if taken more than once.

The Internship in Strategic Educational Leadership provides candidates with the opportunity to apply theoretical and empirical knowledge. Under the direction of an advising professor, the student will engage in strategic leadership experiences in an appropriate educational setting aligned with their goals. Internship projects will address high-quality curricular, instructional, assessment, and financial resources that promote learning experiences and opportunities in possible settings as general education, adult education, higher education, non-profit educational settings, and educational areas in business sectors.