PhD in Education

If you are interested in thinking deeply about, researching, and theorizing education in relation to power, culture, and societal transformation, the Ph.D. in Educational Foundations is for you. Faculty and students in the Department of Educational Foundations explore these relationships by drawing on the fields of history, sociology, and philosophy as well as interdisciplinary concepts, frameworks, and theories in the humanities and social sciences such as political-economy; international relations; critical theory; postcolonialism; feminism; and cultural studies. By drawing on these perspectives and more, students are able to build capacities for understanding essential questions about how education–within and beyond schools–is affected by historical, cultural, and political conditions and the larger systems in which it is embedded, as well as how education contributes to social change at various levels, from the local to the global.

The faculty and courses in the Ph.D. in Educational Foundations prepare students to think critically about the purposes of education and, in so doing, draw attention to the transformational potential of education. At the same time, analysis of how education can help to create a more just and equitable world is grounded in an understanding of the multiple ways that education has been, and continues to be, implicated in the reproduction of inequalities. Importantly, in preparing students to analyze educational practices, pedagogies, and policies, issues of worldview are explicitly addressed. Critical questions include: Whose perspectives inform educational policy and practice? How do different histories, worldviews, discourses, and ideologies in education benefit or disadvantage different individuals and groups across the lines of class, race, 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; this is all the more true in the context of the 21st century, 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.

Because this program focuses on educational transformation, social change, and empowerment of individuals, groups, and communities, it is ideal for students and professionals working in a range of institutional and non-formal contexts. Students who complete this doctoral program are poised to address key issues at the intersection of education, society, and inequity. Our graduates not only go on to assume positions as faculty and researchers but also as organizational leaders, higher education professionals, community advocates, school administrators, educational specialists working with school systems (e.g., the Hawaii Department of Education), and teacher leaders.

Please click here to access the recording of an information session detailing our degree programs.

See here and here for profiles of some of our current doctoral students.