Doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction

 Research Practice Teams

Curriculum and Instruction EdD students are admitted to join a Research Practice Team based on their interests, experience, and career goals. Each team consists of a faculty advisor and doctoral students conducting research related to the team's focus. Applicants should identify which team they would like to be considered for in their statement of purpose. We are currently accepting applications to the following teams:

Using Data to Support Innovation

How can you as a teacher, counselor, school leader, or education professional use data to improve fairness in education and promote new opportunities to learn for students? 

This research team aims to develop skills and practices for using data to leverage patterns in existing data to drive innovation and research.

We believe that teaching, learning, and assessment today is increasingly shaped by how individual student level data, state level data, and international data are interpreted and used. However, teachers and professionals in education who serve students and communities are often one step removed from first-hand inquiry with data. This team is committed to placing experienced educators at the center of data analysis and interpretation. The goal of the team is to produce findings that inform practice and point to innovative solutions to problems of fairness and access in curriculum offerings for college and career success.

As a doctoral student on this team, you may:

• Discover patterns and trends in existing data to better understand a problem of practice you experience every day.
• Learn to apply data science techniques to big data in education to make predictions and classifications that can open curricular pathways for students.
• Use data analytics to learn more about student competencies that may lead to placement in instructional interventions or curriculum pathways that improve access to college or career.
• Generate new qualitative or quantitative data on emerging curricular or instructional problems to shape future innovation.

The research process in this team starts with identifying a personal interest within the team’s focus on fairness and access to curriculum offerings for college and career success. The team will review prior research and analyze existing data. Innovations are then studied in-depth to validate their efficacy for improving learning outcomes. Dissertation research might entail continued analysis of existing data or collection of new data. Current and former teachers and school leaders are encouraged to apply.

For more information, please contact Dr. Curtis Pyke (cpyke@gwu.edu).

Research of Informal Learning in the Arts and Humanities

Taking place among DC’s world-famous museums and performance spaces, this Research Practice Team (RPT) will engage with arts and humanities and its pedagogies to conduct research of informal learning experiences. A focus of the RPT is on interdisciplinary content and methods, creativity, and the integration of the arts and humanities with other ways and means of inquiry and formal education practices, such as those of PreK-12 schools. The team will explore:

• What informal learning experiences and approaches do educators and students find to be the most novel and useful both in terms of their everyday lives and in relation to formal education?
• How might museum and performance art experiences inspire visitors, audiences, and researchers to take social and political action?
• What do we know and what needs to be developed in terms of arts and humanities integration with other content areas and research?
• How might permanent and temporary public arts, performances, and humanities content and practices function as public pedagogy?

The RPT experiences will prepare graduates to apply knowledge of teaching, learning, and research in designing, analyzing, and assessing education programs and developing curriculum and instruction both in and out of schools. Individuals in PreK-12, museum education, social sciences, performing and visual arts, government, public administration, and non-profit organizations are encouraged to apply. The work of this RPT will be shared through international conferences and publications in high impact venues.

For more information, please contact Dr. Jonathan Eakle (jeakle@gwu.edu).

Student Perspectives in Science Education

Doctoral students on this RPT will work with innovative science teachers to understand how new instructional approaches or curriculum changes are experienced by their students. Drawing on the intended-enacted-experienced curriculum model (Clements, Donovan, Theobold, & Crowe, 2021) and the concept of coherence seeking (Sikorski & Hammer, 2019), the team will explore:

• In what ways is the implementation of a new science curriculum perspective-dependent? How might students’ perspectives be similar or different from the teacher?
• When and in what ways might differences in students’ and teachers’ perspectives on curriculum be helpful and generative for science learning? When might these differences be problematic?
• How can information about students’ and teachers’ perspectives be helpful for supporting curriculum design, implementation, and change?

Doctoral students on the team will have opportunities to present their work to teachers, researchers, potential funders, and administrators through a variety of venues. This team will be based in the DC-metro region and will involve face-to-face meetings and classes. Applicants to the team should demonstrate an interest in improving science education. (Prior experience as a science teacher or curriculum developer is helpful, but not required.) Individuals with expertise in educational technology, special education, and multilingual science instruction are encouraged to apply. For more information, please contact Dr. Tiffany-Rose Sikorski, (tsikorski@gwu.edu). 

Reimagining Curriculum through the Humanities

Engaged with the field of curriculum studies, the Research Practice Team (RPT) will explore the significance of curriculum scholarship and its foundations in the humanities for the practice of education in schools and communities. Curriculum is widely understood as an institutional plan for education. The field of curriculum studies, however, calls for and fosters an understanding of curriculum as a complex human experience with subjective and social dimensions demanding elaboration and reconceptualization. Within this framework, using modes of interpretation and composition specific to the humanities, doctoral students in the RPT will reimagine curriculum and expand its significance, pursuing questions about curriculum in sites of educational practice relevant to their professional lives. The RPT supports doctoral students as they establish unique lines of inquiry into curriculum theory and educational practice, and it serves as a humanities-oriented educational community. Students contribute to the development of this scholarly community through the shared labor of study, writing, and conversation. Each student engages with humanities scholarship to enhance the understanding of curriculum as content, form, and place of human experience. The RPT will prepare graduates to research and develop curriculum through the purposes, frameworks, and methods of the humanities. Individuals in PreK-12 education, higher education, and community- based education with experience or interest in humanities scholarship (e.g., literary studies, psychoanalytic criticism, theories of race and gender, etc.) are encouraged to apply.

For more information, please contact Dr. Brian Casemore (casemore@gwu.edu).