Education Policy Studies Certification

Program Overview

The objectives of the Education Policy Studies Graduate Certificate Program will be to provide students with:

• Knowledge they can apply to the study of education policy within their major discipline or to their work in policy settings.
• Skills in analyzing education policy issues, i.e., understanding differing values, political and economic arguments, costs/benefits, and policy processes.
• Conceptual tools to use in understanding and resolving policy implementation problems.

The Graduate Certificate in Education Policy will serve both as a stand-alone graduate certificate program for non-degree graduate students, and as a graduate certificate that can be integrated within a master's or doctorate plan of study. It will be available to any MU graduate student.

Program Characteristics

Sequence of courses-(12 semester hours/four courses)

1). Required Courses (Nine semester hours/three courses)

EL458 Sociology of Education 
Contexts, structures, and processes of schooling; effects on class, race, ethnicity and gender; social change, educational policy and organizational dynamics; and higher education and the economy.

EL9460 Philosophic Theories in Education 

Examines major idelolgical movements in modern education, their social antecedents, and philosophic underpinnings. A strong foundation for policy discourse analysis (e.g.analysis of documents and policy speeches).

EL9462 History of U.S. Education Policy
Provides overview of development of U.S. education, explores analytic tools for studying history of education and introduces multiple ways of constructing the history of a particular movement, reform, or era in education.

2) One Elective Course (Three hours/one course)

EL9434 Investigations on School Law
EL9459 International Education and National Development
EL9463 Politics of Education (new course title)
EL9465 Policy Analysis Using Large Databases

All PhD students are required to complete internships in both college teaching and research. The doctoral student's advisory committee and the department's director of graduate studies will determine when this requirement has been satisfied.

Other Information

For more information about this program contact the ELPA Department by phone at 573-882-8221 or by e-mail at elpagrad@missouri.edu