Curriculum Studies and Teacher Education (CTE) offers doctoral degrees with the following specializations: Elementary Education; Literacy, Language, and English Education; History/Social Science Education; Mathematics Education; Science, Engineering and Technology Education; and Teacher Education. In addition, two cross-area specializations—Learning Sciences and Technology Design, and Race, Inequality, and Language in Education—enable doctoral students in those specializations to ground their studies in the CTE academic area.
CTE is designed to prepare scholars and practitioners to address a number of fundamental educational questions: What should be taught, to whom, for what ends? How can school programs be organized to optimize the educational development of students? What processes can be employed to enable teachers and policy makers to understand the strengths and weaknesses of schools?
CTE is based on the premise that schools are most likely to improve when those engaged in their improvement recognize the highly interactive nature of school processes. How science is taught, for example, is not independent of the time teachers spend planning their programs or how they believe their efforts will be evaluated. How school subjects are defined and the time allocated to them influence what students are able to learn. What options exist for the organization of the school curriculum? How do evaluation practices influence the priorities of both teachers and students and how can such practices be designed so that they support, rather than inhibit, the achievement of educational aims? CTE helps graduate students learn how to think about such questions and how to develop the specialized understanding and research skills needed to study and improve educational practice.
The CTE doctoral qualifying paper (or QP) has two purposes: The first is to provide second year doctoral students with a direct experience in conceiving, designing, carrying out, and writing up an original piece of research before setting out on a dissertation. The second is to demonstrate that students are capable of undertaking a doctoral dissertation that meets the academic standards of this university. (See "GUIDELINES FOR CTE QUALIFYING PAPER" for more detailed information about the content and expectations for the QP.)
The qualifying paper (QP) should be a work of original research. The QP study addresses a research question by collecting and analyzing original data, primary materials, or by analyzing an existing data set. In structure, format, and length, the QP should be modeled on articles in a scholarly journal that the student, in consultation with the adviser, has identified as appropriate for the research undertaken.
Updated March 2019
Assistant Professor, University of Michigan
Assistant Professor, University of Washington
Assistant Professor, SUNY, New Paltz
Assistant Professor, Southeastern Louisiana University
Assistant Professor, University of Colorado, Boulder
Assistant Professor, University of the Andes, Bogota, Colombia
Assistant Professor, Notre Dame University
Assistant Professor, Sonoma State University
Assistant Professor, Purdue University
Assistant Professor, University of Maine
Visiting Assistant Professor, Teachers College Columbia
Associate Professor, Educational Policy and Planning, The University of Texas at Austin
Associate Professor, University of Connecticut
Associate Professor, University of Minnesota
Associate Professor, University of Michigan
Post-doc at Center for the Support of Excellence in Teaching, Stanford
Research Scientist, SK Partners, LLC
© Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305.
