EdD in Educational and Professional Practice: Social Justice Leadership
Location: AU Online
Credits for Degree: 60 semester credits
Standard Mode of Instruction: Low-residency
Standard time to completion: 36 months
Program Overview
The Ed.D. program prepares change-oriented scholar-practitioners committed to advancing more just, inclusive, and sustainable schools, organizations, and communities. Through a transdisciplinary approach, the program integrates theory and practice through shared seminars, applied inquiry, and individualized specialization, enabling students to address complex challenges related to equity, ethics, leadership, and social justice
Students specialize in one of the following transdisciplinary areas of inquiry: Critical Pedagogy; Environmental and Sustainability Education; Humane Education; Multicultural and Anti-Racist Education; Social Emotional Learning; Social Justice Leadership; Waldorf Education; or Self-Designed.
Specializations may include seminars, individualized study, and opportunities to take courses across Antioch University programs. Students may also transfer approved graduate credits in alignment with program requirements. Each student’s dissertation will fall within the chosen specialization.
The program culminates in a Practice-Based Dissertation that establishes students as scholar-practitioners who design and implement meaningful, research-informed solutions to complex challenges in schools, organizations, communities, and national and global contexts.
Social Justice Leadership Specialization
Students in the Social Justice Leadership specialization inquire into the theory and practice of leadership with an emphasis on enacting justice and equity in their educational practices whether in schools, non-profit or for-profit organizations, and community-based organizations. Students will read about leadership theories and reflect on their own practices in developing a philosophy that embraces a social justice orientation and employs systems thinking and analysis, relational practices, complexity principles, and mission-based advocacy. In addition to engaging with the challenges of taking leadership theory into practice, students in the specialization will explore diverse meanings of social justice, including classical western views of justice as well as contemporary perspectives produced by marginalized voices that reconceptualize meanings of justice. Scholar-practitioners in Social Justice Leadership will theorize and engage in the creation of socially just spaces through skilled leadership that involves educational practices. Students will investigate the intersection of leadership, power, ethics, morality, and justice, emphasizing ways in which marginalization and exclusionary processes and systems may be dismantled.
The specialization may be composed of seminars and individualized study. You may also choose to take courses in other Antioch programs and to transfer in credits from previous graduate work. Each student’s dissertation topic will fall within their chosen specialization.
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