Teaching and Learning - Educational Specialties

The comprehensive examination covers three major areas in the program:

• foundations/curriculum and instruction
• focus studies
• research

Exams are usually taken in the semester following the completion of all coursework and planned in a face-to-face meeting with the doctoral committee. At that meeting, a comprehensive exam scheduling form is completed to identify:

• who will author each set of questions
• who will be the second reader
• what kind of exam it will be
• the dates for these exams to take place

Committee members are often chosen to write and/or be second readers, but non-committee members may be chosen as well. It is the student’s responsibility to gain permission from each author and second reader in advance of the exam.

Three examples of the foundations/curriculum exam

1. Given the current policies and laws of the country and your state, explain the common structures and elements of curriculum in your school system. How are Dewey, Tyler, and one other thinker of your choice represented in the curriculum and instruction and in what ways would you recommend that these thinkers be more or less represented?

2. Trace the history of two curriculum theories (humanism and pragmatism), identifying the major thinkers for each, the basic tenants of each, and show how each are alike and different in their basic characteristics. If found in the curriculum of a school today, what would each look like in terms of broad themes, approaches, and philosophical underpinnings?

3. You have been asked to develop a sequence of professional training workshops in literacy acquisition for an elementary school district which has a high percentage of students from minority cultures and many low SES students as well. What bodies of literature constitute the core of knowledge from which you would draw in developing this curriculum? What conceptual framework do you bring to this development process and how is this framework revealed in the curriculum you would develop? (Do not develop the actual curriculum in response to this question.) In your response make clear what paradigmatic perspective you are using, which curriculum theorists you are drawing on, and what role critical inquiry plays in this discussion.

For further guidance, talk with your adviser and other doctoral students, and be sure to read page 15 of The Curriculum and Learning Doctoral Application and Program Guide.

Four examples of the research comprehensive exam

1. Present as thoroughly as possible three paradigms for research (traditional positivism, logical positivism, and interpretive) by explaining each perspective’s history, earliest thinkers, and any associated schools of thought, and how each paradigm defines ontology, epistemology, causality, generalizability, and validity.

2. Compare and contrast the epistemological perspectives of Bacon or Hume, Carnap or Popper, and Dilthey or Husserl. Show how each would design a research study including purpose, problem/questions, methods, data collection, and data analysis.

3. Examining the research study in the article provided, carefully identify and critically analyze the methodology, methods, sampling, data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Be detailed in your response.

4. Using an outline format, carefully present your dissertation study from methodology to analysis. In using a full narrative format, show how, by reformulating your study question, your dissertation study would be designed using an opposite paradigm.