Foundations of Transformative Education

College of EducationEDEFPrograms Overview

PhD in Education

Now Accepting Applications

Typical Length Varies

Delivery Campus-Based

Nationally Accredited

Education cannot be separated from deep planetary transformations in social orders, technology, politics, and ecology. Education also has the potential to open up new possibilities for living and reorganizing our relations to one another and the world. The PhD track in Foundations of Transformative Education builds capacities for educational leadership in relation to a range of urgent challenges including those stemming from contemporary struggles over land, wealth, knowledge, law, identity, culture, technology, democracy, and sustainability. The program is ideal for students and professionals seeking careers and advancement in schools, universities, non-profits, museums, community organizations, and other non-formal educational contexts.

Faculty and students in the Department of Educational Foundations develop intellectual and practical tools for practicing transformative education by drawing on foundational academic fields of history, sociology, and philosophy as well as interdisciplinary concepts, frameworks, and theories in the humanities and social sciences such as globalization and internationalization; critical theory; postcolonialism; feminism; cultural studies; Hawaiian and indigenous frameworks. By drawing on these perspectives and more, students build capacities for analyzing essential issues concerning how education–within and beyond institutions–is shaped by historical, sociocultural, technological, and political conditions. Students translate knowledge into practice for educational and social change at various scales, from the local to the planetary.

The faculty and courses in the PhD track in Transformative Education prepare students to think critically about the purposes of education and, in so doing, draw attention to the potential of education for social transformation. Students are trained to assess and think deeply about educational practices, pedagogies, and policies and how they are shaped by inequalities and conflicts over knowledge and worldview. Critical questions include: Whose perspectives shape educational policy and practice? How do different histories, discourses, and ideologies in education benefit or disadvantage different individuals and groups across class, race, nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and ability? What are the implications of different perspectives for equality, sustainability, democracy, and the future? And how do we conceive ethical practice when different perspectives are seemingly irreconcilable? Engaging with such questions has always been essential and has become even more vital in this era, where a variety of narratives and agendas compete for influence in an attempt to shape education at every level from classroom pedagogy, to school leadership practices, to system policies and beyond.

“My doctoral research is focused on looking at how Filipino food and foodways… can be an access point to talk and learn about our heritage, history, and to heal and reconnect with our roots.”

Shannon Cristobal PhD in Educational Foundations Student

Student