Doctor of Education: Ethical Leadership Courses

This course provides the doctoral candidate with foundational knowledge and resources for academic success in the program. This introductory course is designed to prepare and support doctoral candidates for the following: academic writing processes and research, student success model for completion of the dissertation experience, engaging intentionally with the learning community, goal-setting and approaches for planning engagement in the academic process, a solid foundational knowledge of ethics within a leadership role and identifying strategic and challenging issues in leadership on which to focus research and application based problem solving.

This course introduces a holistic model that includes the four major areas of personal development that contribute to effective leadership: spiritual leadership, physical leadership, emotional leadership, and cognitive leadership. Candidates analyze their own character and competence as leaders with the goal of maximizing their personal leadership effectiveness.

This course introduces doctoral-level candidates to the field of research, research design, and research methods. Standards and practices for planning, conducting and completing research studies will be covered (e.g., selecting appropriate research designs,
choosing/generating reliable and valid measures, etc.). Candidates will be introduced to quantitative and qualitative research methods. Emphasis will be given to developing and refining research questions in the context of each candidate’s own dissertation in practice
and preparing the candidate to collect data appropriate to those questions. Candidates will examine ethical issues and dilemmas in leadership research and practice.

The purpose of this course is to analyze the history, ideas, and theories of leadership. Candidates will analyze significant issues and ethical dilemmas that have confronted leadership throughout historical periods. Through this analysis, doctoral candidates will
consider leadership from various disciplinary perspectives and start clarifying their own philosophy of ethical leadership.

This course will examine qualitative research methods. Candidates should be able to undertake doctoral-level research using a range of qualitative methods including interviews, observation, focus groups, and case studies. The course will focus specifically on sampling,
in-depth interviews, and focus groups, as well as data management, data analysis, and data presentation. Ethical issues in qualitative research are also considered.

This course is designed to develop interpersonal skills by analyzing routine group or team behavior and leadership effectiveness. Utilizing a team-based learning culture, the course design will simulate real-life team building processes. The course equips candidates to lead with self-awareness, awareness of others, effective interpersonal communication, and to build a culture of trust relationships as a basis for effective leadership.

This course will focus on the elements of public policy, politics, and social action. It will examine the impact of these factors on ethical
leadership. Leadership never occurs in a vacuum. Leaders must be attuned to the nuances and ramifications of actions both personal
and professional. In this course, the candidates will examine competing paradigms and explore the many dimensions of policy, politics, and social action. Ethical leaders positively impact their sphere of influence throughout their professional careers.

This course is designed to provide candidates with the background required to analyze quantitative data and interpret results found through doctoral-level research. Appropriate statistics for the analysis of data produced from a variety of standard research designs will be emphasized. Areas of study include levels of measurement, random sampling, probability distributions, the normal distribution, descriptive statistics, null hypothesis significance testing, inferential statistics, confidence intervals, t-tests, ANOVAs, correlations, chi-square tests, and regression. Candidates will be introduced to a statistical package for data analysis.  

Organizational change in the 21st century is inevitable. Today’s leaders need to be proactive and forecast the needs of the organization for the short-term, the intermediate, and the long-term. Leaders are primarily change agents to influence a shared vision for the future.
In this course, the candidate’s knowledge base of organizational theory will be expanded through in-depth literature review, which will
offer new insights into responding to internal as well as external pressures for change. The candidate will learn to identify changing
circumstances in society, as well as globally, and also be cognizant of any legal issues that might impact decisions for change. Transforming subjective perceptions is crucial to successful innovation and the key objective to change. Each of these decision points will be within the ethical framework.

Leadership goes beyond those predictable and even trite behaviors normally chronicled in the leadership literature. Leadership is all
about being. A major tenant of the Christian faith suggests that the message of the Gospel propels us to go beyond the “norm” in
leadership activity. In this course, candidates will demonstrate they are capable of understanding and exercising the “best” of both
contractual as well as covenant leadership. The purpose of this course is to help the candidate develop into a grace-full leader— one who is bold, but not ego-filled.

This course explores an organization’s holistic human development plan to assist candidates in understanding and utilizing a comprehensive view of strategic thinking, strategic management, and systems theory. Leveraging knowledge in resource allocation, human
resource management, sustainability strategy, marketing management and crisis management, candidates will develop a strategic plan for their organization. The plan will include environmental analysis, casting vision, strategic thinking, strategic planning, execution, and project management.

Society is transformed as a result of the decisions made by social, spiritual, education and economic leaders. Candidates will examine
ethical decision making, effective leadership, perspectives of moral reasoning and their application to various personal, business and
civic responsibilities. Additionally, candidates will engage in global citizenship through a cultural immersion experience.

The dissertation in practice is a field-based, practice-centered inquiry, which consists of comprehensive applied research of significant
importance. The dissertation in practice will demonstrate candidates’ ability to identify a significant issue within their organization or
community and their ability to conduct research leading to a solution or improvement from which others will benefit. In this course candidates will uphold the highest standards of scholarship and inquiry. The dissertation in practice is comprised of five written
chapters consisting of: Proposal; Literature Review; Methodology; Findings; and Conclusions and Recommendations. (Candidates will
be guided by a “Dissertation in Practice” Manual.)