Goals and Mission

Welcome to the Ph.D. Program in Education at the University of California, Davis. The program faculty members view each of you as an important partner in identifying an appropriate course of study, which will result in a meaningful graduate experience. This information is designed to supplement the more general Graduate Student Handbook available on the Office of Graduate Studies Web site.

Background

Each student is working toward the Ph.D. within the Graduate Group in Education. A Graduate Group system is found almost uniquely on the Davis campus. Faculty members organize across departmental lines to offer a graduate degree, which is housed in a chosen academic unit. Though housed in the School of Education, the Graduate Group in Education is comprised of faculty from a wide range of academic units in addition to Education including, e.g., Agricultural & Environmental Sciences, American Studies, Anthropology, Economics, Geology, Human and Community Development, Linguistics, Mathematics, Native American Studies, Physics, Plant Biology, Sociology, Statistics, and Spanish.

Program Goals

The primary goal of the Ph.D. Program in Education is to offer instruction to students in the theories, methods, and accumulated research that provide the basis for current understanding and for expanding knowledge of the learner, instruction, and schooling in society. The ultimate goal of the program is to prepare scholars who can both advance knowledge in education through research and improve the practice of educating and schooling children, youth, and adults. The program will also prepare scholars to occupy a variety of leadership positions in universities, school districts, state educational agencies, and private organizations concerned with instructional research, policy, and practice.

Mission

The PhD in Education at UC Davis has at its core a fundamental concern with impacting the practice of education: through research, through scholarly engagement, through public service, and through graduate training. Our work not only has implications for educational practice, but our faculty and graduate students are directly engaged on a local and regional level, as well as on the larger stage of national and international educational reform and policy. The program seeks to address contemporary challenges, particularly unprecedented levels of cultural and linguistic diversity, and to go beyond the more specialized and fragmented concerns of traditional schools of education. In particular, the PhD program prepares educators to use rigorous research and theory to define and frame educational problems so they can be addressed appropriately, and to merge research and practice effectively in ways that will improve public education. The program is designed to prepare a broad range of professionals in the field of education, including the professoriate, new teacher education faculty, educational researchers, and leaders for educational institutions. Because our program structure, which relies on the interdisciplinary of the Graduate Group in Education (GGE) and permeable emphasis areas within the SOE, emphasizes interconnected approaches and knowledge, our PhD students come away with a deep systemic understanding of educational complexity—drawing on curricular, cultural and linguistic, cognitive, institutional, and policy perspectives.