A Study On Development Of Outcome-Based EdD (Doctor Of Education) Program

As a dynamic process, the curriculum development includes a series of links from proposing a motion, establishing the theoretical basis, clarifying curriculum objectives and building curriculum structure to implementing and evaluating curriculum. It focuses on educational requirements of the social developments, reflects value orientation of education, restricts the educational activities, and directly influences the goals and educational quality for EdD.The program of EdD in China has just been started. Although its curriculum development has made outstanding achievements in the last few years, there are still many problems which cannot be ignored. Take the major of educational leadership and management for an example, the possible overlap of curriculum objectives of EdD and PhD of education is due to the specific direction of researching professionals is not clear; division standards of module curriculums are so obscure that lower their relationships. Moreover, the curriculum structure is too simple to lack school characteristics; curriculum implementation is limited to the curriculum teaching andaway from the practice settings, and lacks of modern teaching techniques, such as, modern distance education and computer, etc. The number of teachers is not enough and its structure needs to be adjusted;the effective standards of curriculum evaluation has not been formed. The simple evaluation ways, subjects and objects and lacking of analysis of the results of evaluation and feedback lead to the disordered function of curriculum evaluationr. As a type of developing new talents, the degree of EdD, the key of developing EdD, has established a unique theoretical basis of curriculum. In addition, the degree has rich characteristics and effectively achieves the training objective. Based on the reality requirements and confusion of developing EdD in China and outcome-based development of curriculum theory, the paper put forwards the subject of development for outcome-based doctor of education program.The development of outcome-based doctor of education program is the mixture of successful education, vocational education, competence-based education and human education idea. It takes the development concepts of "promote the development of students as the center","all students can achieve success","emphasize that curriculum should be associated with occupation", and "focus on learners ultimately having the ability".Curriculum objectives are the specification of curriculum concepts and the key to curriculum development. According to the abstraction of state objectives, the curriculum objectives of EdD can be divided vertically into three levels from the abstract to the concrete:curriculum objectives, learning outcome and core competence; as for all objectives of a certain level, according to its different types it also can be classified into three levels:knowledge, skill and attitude. Taking the major of educational leadership and management of EdD as an example, its curriculum objectives aim to develop researching professionals. As a creator and user of knowledge for educational leadership and management practice, they are problem solvers beyond the range of subjects and educators with strong sense of responsibilities. In accordance with international standards, theoretical basis, the needs of students, national society and educational development, characteristics of schools, industry development and occupational demand, it initially established learning outcome for the major of EdD. The outcome can be divided into five core competences:"ability of independence, innovation and change","development capability of self and others","leadership of curriculum and teaching","organization and management" and "ability of professional research". Every core competence is an external comprehensive performance of knowledge, skill and attitude. They make up the curriculum objective system of EdD and reflect many characteristics of student as the center, clear focus, high expectation, demonstrative features, difference and coherence of levels, and agreement through communication, etc.The outcome-based doctor of education program places emphasis on professional practices. It requires us to make introspection about our work all the time, to combine practice scene with work field, and to pay attention to the cultivation of teamwork spirit. This kind of course enables students to achieve a better development of their career in future, and permits our courses to become modularized by employing some "core ability" components. We will shake off the conventional discipline system by drawing lessons from the EdD program of America, Britain and Australia, and learning from the current training courses of EdD, pedagogy Ph.D., and MSc. We will finally reconstruct the course elements and establish a substantive structure with the "core ability" being centered. We will further improve our program structure by integrating knowledge of discipline, cross-discipline, methodology and practice. And finally, according to the attribute of course elements, we will develop our course into an organic one consisting of core module, expansion modules, case analysis module, site-learning module and remedial service module.The implementation of the program is complex, which involves many requirements such as theoretical research, education management system, material insecurity and the faculty construction and so on. Due to the profession and practicalness of EdD, we shall link the program implementation with practice with an eye to its features (adult and on-the-job). Therefore, we should lay stress on the participation of both teachers and students during the implementation of MSc's professional courses. Focusing on the problems existing in MSc, we will employ a variety of teaching methods including self-learning, group learning, distance learning, case study and field learning to promote the formation of "core ability" of EdD. In addition, we will also conduct on-site guidance and domestic and foreign educational organization visit, and set up an MSc forum.The evaluation of the outcome-based doctor of education program focuses on the "results" raised by students, and it will be further developed into a system which is multidimensional, multipart, integrative and normalized. This new evaluation system involves curriculum evaluation, graduation thesis evaluation, occupation qualification as well as the analysis of related factors affecting students'learning outcomes, and this system will serve as the basis of the development of program in future..Compared with conventional discipline-oriented course structure, the outcome-based doctor of education program shows certain advantages, but there are still some defects. If we always focus on the definition of "result", the development of our outcome-based program will inevitably fall into the pontiff by "scientific model"; if we overstress the importance of ability, this may lead to the neglect of theoretical study. We regard existing problems as our motivation encouraging us to reconstruct outcome-based program in the fusion of modern and postmodern ideology, to rethink about the relation between the cultivation of "core ability" and "theoretical study", and to further probe into the definition of "core ability" and the implementation of relative indexes. Although we've already discussed about the development of the outcome-based doctor of education program both theoretically and practically, we still find there are many problems needing to be addressed. Looking to the future, we should regard basic research as an indispensable guarantee for the implementation of EdD program; empirical study as a necessary way to promote the course development; micro operation mode as the manifestation of EdD program value; the publicity strategy as the key to a successful implementation of outcome-based doctor of education program.