Adult Education (Ed.D.)
College of Arts and Sciences
Program Description:
The NLU doctoral program in Adult Education (ADED), offered within the College of Arts and Sciences, provides a forum for critical reflection on adult education practice. The future of our economy, and of democracy itself, rests on an informed and critical populace. Weekend and residential sessions, together with web-based support provide the resources for educators of adults—teachers, organizers, trainers and "grass-roots" activists who, through their work, seek to contribute to the emergence of a productive society grounded in equity and justice.
Our curriculum is based on the role adult education plays as a means of fostering informed decision-making and democracy-building in the work place or in the community. You will help shape that curriculum through the practice of student governance; collegial, critical conversations with faculty and fellow students.
The entire program, including classwork and dissertation, can be completed in three years.
Benefits:
The ACE Doctoral Program aims to prepare future leaders in the field of adult and continuing education. By creating an educational forum that merges theory and everyday practice, the program gives candidates an opportunity to use their own experience to clarify and challenge assumptions that underlie adult education, while transforming their own practice.
How You Will Learn:
Completing your Ed.D. at National-Louis University does not mean a major interruption of your day-to-day work. Classes are scheduled on eight weekends during the year, plus a two-week Institute during the summer. This enables students from throughout the United States and Canada to travel to Chicago for classes and maintain their current work and family responsibilities at home.
Features:
The ACE doctoral program offers these unique features, which have made it attractive to those whose professional and career commitments make participation in a traditional doctoral program impossible.
- The entire program-class work and dissertation-can be completed in three years. This is accomplished by interweaving course work with each student's doctoral research.
- The curriculum is centered on adult education as a means of fostering informed decision-making and building democracy, whether in the work place, university, or community. This is accomplished, in part, through student governance-a process by which students help shape the curriculum and program.
- The Internet is used to maintain momentum of class-time discussions and share written work with the entire group during the time between residential sessions.
- Classes are team-taught, permitting faculty to model critical discourse and emphasize differing understandings in the social construction of knowledge. Classes use collegial, critical conversation and peer as well as faculty led discussion as a prime teaching method.
What You Will Learn:
- How to apply theory to practice.
- How to evaluate teaching practices.
- How to improve and enhance teaching practices.
- How to design and conduct rigorous research.
- How to engage in critical, reflective practice.
Where You Can Take the Program:
At the NLU campus in
Chicago.
