• EDLE 801: Foundations of Education Leadership: History and Leadership
• EDLE 802: Foundations of Education Leadership: Ethics, Philosophy and Law
• Semester: Summer 2004
• Professors: Dr. S. David Brazer / Dr. Dennis R. Dunklee
• Syllabus

• Research Questions - Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) model selection
• Research Questions Rewrite - CSR model selection
• Follow-up Research Question Memo with comments
• Research Question one page defence
• Literature Review Draft - CSR model selection

• Clements, A. (1996). Frindle. NY: Simon & Shuster.
• Mondale, S.; Patton, S. (2001). School: The story of American public education.
          Boston: Beacon Press.
• Stevens, E.; Wood, G.; Sheehan, J. (2002). Justice, ideology, and education:
          an introduction to the social foundations of education.( 4th edition).
          Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

• Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (most recent edition).

        I took these two courses, the first two in a three-course sequence designed to introduce students to foundations of education and issues in education leadership, combined together and team taught by both Dr. Brazer and Dr. Dunklee in the Summer of 2004.  It was a short semester and there was a lot to cover on U.S. edcation history, philosophy, ethics, and law.  While learning about these topics was very interesting and informative, I will always remember this class for writing.  Both Dr. Brazer and Dr. Dunklee made us write... a lot, or atleast that was my perception then.

        I had to deal with so many challenges simultaneously: little or no prior background in the field of education and educational issues, no exposure to social science resarch challenges, very short semester, two courses combined together with the combined reading list, two instructors with very different styles and expectations, too much focus on writing a problem statement about a research topic and rationale culminating in a literature review, and all the nuances and expectations of Western "academic writing" and APA style... literally too much for me to handle in addition to a full-time job.  I was never exposed to a writing style before, where I had to layout my thesis very early on, and then make sure that every following paragraph or argument was directly related to or supporting the thesis.  Essentially, I had to learn how to write from ground up in order to meet the standards of "academic writing," and at the same time, struggle with figuring out where each byte of information fits, i.e., introduction, prupose, significance, or conclusion according to Dr. Brazer's rules.  Both, the research questions paper and the rewrite were disappointing, however, I managed to catch up in the final literature review.

        In essence, this experience of taking these two courses combined in a very short time turned out to be the most challenging, yet by far the most productive so far.  I got some exposure to the history of U.S. education, the challenges both educators and education policy-makers faced during the last two centuries, the "academic writing" and corresponding nuances, and a fair amount of literature on Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) models.

        [Click here] to see the list of competencies achieved in this course.