Cement your status as a superior practitioner in the field of education.
With a doctorate in curriculum and instruction, you’ll demonstrate your professional excellence, whether as a teacher, a scholar or in a service personnel role. Our program offers three specializations to match your goals and interests: curriculum leadership, literacy education, and equity and social inquiry. You’ll focus on practical applications of educational research while preparing to teach at the collegiate level.
Our graduates have gone on to become directors of assessment, directors of instruction, faculty, superintendents, provosts and curriculum directors. Their places of employment include colleges, universities, school districts, corporations and nonprofit organizations.
93 credit hours
Hybrid
Full or part time
Start in the fall, spring or summer semester
Focus on your future role as an educational leader. As an insightful and responsive leader, your program will be focused around investigations of cultural, moral and ethical questions. Your commitment to scholarship and research is required to enable your understanding of the future needs of society, educational institutions and students.
Learn transformative approaches to become a change agent related to issues of equity and inclusion in P-16 learning environments. Coursework and assessments draw upon wide-ranging critical theoretical frameworks that examine and critique multiple systems of power and oppression.
Become a knowledgeable practitioner, scholar and leader in the field of literacy. Your coursework will explore literacy research, theory and practice to better understand how language and literacy are learned. Your commitment to scholarship, research and practice is required to improve the status of literacy for all learners.
You’ll apply through the Graduate School.
Satisfactory academic and professional progress must be indicated by your application materials, which include:
Before our final admission decision, you must demonstrate writing competency and participate in a preadmission interview.
Our competitive tuition and fees helps ensure an excellent return on the investment of your time and resources. Learn about additional funding opportunities for graduate students.
Many NIU graduate students have an assistantship, which provides financial support (typically a tuition waiver and stipend), as well as career preparation.
At 93 credits, it will take approximately two to three years to complete your degree.
You’ll begin your coursework by taking two of our foundational courses:
You'll work directly with your faculty advisor to complete coursework constituting common requirements in research understandings and skills, learning and development theories, and sociocultural analyses of education.
You’ll complete a minimum of 12 semester hours (excluding dissertation hours) of course work in your specialization.
If your specialization requires it, you'll select a related course from outside your track to broaden your knowledge, strengthen professional skills or develop advanced research abilities.
You’ll take TLCI 704: Research Seminar in Curriculum and Instruction.
You'll complete your candidacy examination.
You'll complete 15-30 semester hours in your final course, TLCI 799: Doctoral Research and Dissertation.
Our faculty bring diverse experiences, backgrounds, scholarship and expertise across the field of education. They’re committed to supporting and collaborating with students in their scholarly and research endeavors.