Our Doctor of Education (EdD) is an ideal development opportunity if you’re a senior professional seeking to enhance and utilise your research expertise in an educational context. Whatever your area of education – from professional learning, higher education, schools, colleges, early years provision or policy development – earning an EdD will position you as a leader in your field.
From the curriculum design in accountancy in higher education to learning in adult communities and, from medical professional learning to digitally-supported education, the Doctor of Education provides a context for advanced inquiry across a wide range of sectors, cultures, contexts and ages.
Our Doctor of Education is tailored to the needs of senior professionals and combines an excellent grounding in research methods and educational theory, with the opportunity to put your research to work in improving professional policy and practice.
Through your self-directed research, you will produce an original, significant and rigorously-derived contribution to your field of practice. Combining the richness of our faculty-wide international research culture, peer-reviewed global research, the expertise of peers, and your own experience, you will utilise the Doctor of Education course to produce new impactful knowledge in your field. These impacts may, in part, be derived from practice and/or be applied as an innovation as new practices. Your research may incorporate a focus on practical knowledge and may lead to professional or organisational change.
You’ll work towards your Doctor of Education either full or part-time under the guidance of expert researchers who have helped to secure the University’s reputation in the field of education.
Top reasons to study with us
Course objectives
The course will enable you to develop research on your own chosen topics in ways that are deeply connected to important professional interests, practices, policies and impacts. Like a PhD, the EdD qualification meets the requirements for the production of a significant, original and rigorous contribution to the field. Distinctively, the course starts with taught modules before the supervised research phases begin. The taught modules look at theories and paradigms of research and orientations to methodology and inquiry.
Flexible learning
There are part-time and full-time options. Students may also study via blended provision in the taught phases for the six core modules. All modules make use of some form of synchronous online and/or face-to-face attendance.
There is also the use of a virtual learning environment (Canvas) and most modules have considerable asynchronous participation in learning tasks online. Most of the classes for the initially taught modules are timetabled for synchronous activity, be that face-to-face or other, on Fridays (occasionally on other days of the week) but check ahead for the semester timetable.
If you’re interested in studying a module from this course, the Postgraduate Certificate or the Postgraduate Diploma then please email Graduate Admissions to discuss your course of study.
Research overview
Our expert interdisciplinary teaching team from across the Faculty of Social Sciences are on hand to introduce you to cutting-edge empirical and theoretical research applicable to your professional context and educational environment. We have a vibrant and collegial research community of students and staff at Stirling. As you can see from our staff listings and publications, we have expertise across many diverse areas of research which can be deployed in doctoral supervision.