Enrollment in the NIU College of Education’s Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction program continued to grow significantly this fall.
Behind the large jump in students specializing in Curriculum Leadership is a new contract cohort from Harper College that includes 20 of its staff along with eight K-12 teachers and administrators from Palatine-based Township High School District 211, Arlington Heights-based Township High School District 214 and Barrington Community Unit School District 220.
Jason Klein, senior director of Learning Partnerships in the NIU College of Education and Division of Outreach, Engagement and Regional Development, calls the partnership “a true win for everyone – especially our collective students and communities.”
“Harper is one of our larger community colleges, and the school districts are all large and diverse,” Klein said. “So, through conversation, everybody engaged around this Ed.D. program with a focus on equity and social inquiry because it was so aligned with the work that everybody was already doing internally within their organizations.”
Mixing the cohort with students from higher education and from feeder districts of the Northwest Educational Council for Student Success (NECSS) secondary and postsecondary regional educational collaborative has created “a community of learners for whom equity is a priority.”
“The content of the coursework leading to the Ed.D. applies from early childhood education through not only the community college level but also through graduate school and ongoing adult education. These are things that make good instruction – and that make good instruction accessible,” Klein said.
“We are all going to learn lessons that should benefit students at all of the organizations and institutions involved,” he added. “We’re nowhere near where we all collectively need to be with inclusion and belonging – we all have work to do on that – and I think that anything that gets new and additional knowledge into that space to help us unpack what we bring to the classroom, and how we package instruction to help students really learn, and learn deeply, will help us.”
Stephanie Whalen, chair of the Academy for Teaching Excellence and professor of English and Interdisciplinary Studies at Harper, is excited to continue the college’s association with NIU.
An Ed.D. cohort of Harper staff that launched in 2011 allowed the college “to develop many leaders who have designed and supported initiatives across campus,” Whalen said.
“In this innovative model, educators from Harper and district schools researched topics related to Harper’s strategic goals and became active participants in teams informing related work,” she said. “When looking to develop another cohort to focus on district equity goals, Harper once again found NIU and the Department of Curriculum and Instruction enthusiastic partners in developing a custom program in Curriculum Leadership, Equity and Social Inquiry.”
The new program was made possible with support from Harper President Avis Proctor and the leaders across the NECSS district partnership, Whalen added, “to build capacity in the region for providing engaging, empowering experiences and closing persistent equity gaps in student success outcomes.”
NIU’s curricular design “provides a sense of community and a deep level of engagement by having one to three in-person sessions for each course,” she added, “with most other sessions held in a live, synchronous format with a combination of both in-person and livestream as well as asynchronous learning employed as needed.”
Graduates of the program become insightful and responsive leaders thanks to the degree’s focus around investigations of cultural, moral and ethical questions and the understanding it imparts of the future needs of society, educational institutions and students.
“Working with doctoral students is so incredibly rewarding,” said Corrine Wickens, professor of Literacy Education and Ed.D. program director.
“As a professor, and as a faculty advisor, you get to walk alongside the student and their journey over several years. You see them bloom and transform into a person that they could have never even imagined possible,” she added. “Then, with this cohort specifically, 46% of the students are BIPOC and several are first-generation college graduates. I can only yet imagine what powerful questions and lines of inquiry they are going to explore and the transformations yet to come for the students, NIU and the greater region.”
Michael Manderino, associate professor of Curriculum and Instruction, is teaching this fall’s first class.
Students are concentrating on the historical and legal background of inequity in curriculum, instruction and assessments, he said, and then examining multiple theoretical approaches to interrupt and dismantle those inequities.
“It is encouraging to see the interinstitutional and student commitment as professionals to pursue the doctorate in equity and social inquiry,” Manderino said.
“In the first few weeks of this program, there has been a synergy of partnership and a cohesion of ideas to develop core knowledge and theoretical understanding,” he added. “The work that students are currently doing is building a foundation for application and future research that matters to the larger Harper district work, K-16 and the students’ individual and collective work as educational professionals.”
Those students, Klein said, are turning “an eye to the work being done to unpackage elements of equity, to look for ways in which either instructional materials or curriculum might not have been providing a strong foundation for all of our students.”
“It looks to have students be attentive to those things and to have an analytical framework as they look so as not to make assumptions about things that we traditionally assumed,” Klein said.
“To some degree, this has always been part of the Curriculum and Instruction doctoral program in leadership. It’s a place where you want to question those assumptions, and that goes hand in hand with equity,” he added. “It’s also purposely built out in some of the elective coursework that looks at traditionally underserved groups as well as in the ‘regular’ coursework, being sure that this is explicitly an outcome of the work that students are doing.”
Klein welcomes contact from other educational administrators throughout Illinois who are interested in offering Ed.D. opportunities to their team members and partners.
Conversations begin with NIU’s side of the table working to understanding the goals and the context of the request, he said, and then progress to “pulling in the right folks from the appropriate departments to see if we can put together something that meets their needs on a timeline that makes sense for everybody.”
“Our goal is nothing short of the moon shot: making sure that every student – every learner in the state, at all levels, elementary school, middle school, high school and post-secondary – is achieving,” he said. “Doing that will require leaders with the skills that leaders in this Ed.D. program are developing.”
Email jason.klein@niu.edu for more information or to get started.
