Education Doctoral Program

Program Scope

SF State’s Education Doctoral Program leads to the Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership, a three year, intensive, multidisciplinary degree designed for educators who want to lead meaningful change. The program centers transformative leadership, social justice and equity, preparing you to identify real problems in education and build practical solutions grounded in research and community needs.

You can specialize in P-12 leadership or community college leadership and your work is focused on improving educational systems from early childhood through postsecondary settings. Across coursework and dissertation research, you develop the skills to envision, lead and sustain social justice focused reform, with an emphasis on equity and improved outcomes for students.

Program Learning Outcomes

Leadership: Students will be able to:

1. Initiate, facilitate, and sustain collaborations
2. Make complex decisions
3. Act as ethical change agents
4. Apply knowledge on issues of accountability
5. Apply knowledge of education policy, public financing, and budgeting

Equity: Students will be able to:

1. Apply analysis of inequalities to design and lead education institutions
2. Support effective equity-centered curricula and pedagogy
3. Integrate research & theory with data to address barriers to recruiting and retaining people from under-represented backgrounds
4. Integrate findings to support special needs and non-traditional students
5. Use effective communication with underserved populations

Inquiry: Students will be able to

1. Evaluate a range of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research on ed. leadership
2. Use findings from relevant qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research on ed. leadership
3. Interpret program evaluations, research reports, to identify programmatic applications of research findings
4. Design and carry out educational research that addresses a practical problem of educational leadership