About Educational Leadership

For a number of decades, the School of Education at Andrews University has been providing participants with graduate education and degrees in the field of educational leadership. With a focused mission to prepare K-12 educational administrators for effective servant leadership in educational settings, ten broadly accepted educational leadership standards are used to guide the programs and to assess participant competencies. Field-based internships with mentoring and a required portfolio help transfer theory and philosophy to application and practice. The programs are delivered at five increasingly more challenging levels.  With this introductory view of our path, let us take a more detailed look at some specific program components as we become acquainted.

Ten Administrative Standards

The Educational Leadership emphasis is presented using ten administrative standards. Seven of these standards (1-7) are the standards used by the Educational Leadership Constituent Council (ELCC). Standard 8 on technology comes from Michigan Department of Education requirements. In addition to these eight standards, two additional standards have been added in consultation with educational leaders in the North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists.

The standards state that a school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by
 

ELCC Standards:

1. Facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that is shared and supported by the school community;
2. Advocating, nurturing, and sustaining a school culture and instructional program conducive to student learning and staff professional growth;
3. Ensuring management of the organization, operations, and resources for a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment;
4. Collaborating with families and responding to diverse community interests and needs, and mobilizing community resources;
5. Acting with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical manner;
6. Understanding, responding to, and influencing the larger political, social, economic, legal, and cultural context;
7. A substantial and sustained educational leadership internship experience;

Additional Michigan Department of Education Standards

1. Understanding and comprehensively applying technology to advance student achievement;
2. Appreciating the perspectives of others and developing a personal philosophy from which action and service arise; and
3. Understanding and comprehensively applying research and evaluation for effective decision making.

Internship/Mentoring

The ELCC has also added the requirement of an internship for use in program accreditation under the National Council of Accreditation in Teacher Education (NCATE). In keeping with this ELCC requirement, all degree programs require an internship/mentoring component that provides significant learning opportunities to synthesize and apply the knowledge and practice and develop the skills identified in the standards. The internship takes the form of substantial, sustained, standards-based work in a real settings, planned and guided cooperatively by the institution and school/district personnel for graduate credit.

Portfolio

All degree programs require the completion of a portfolio that documents the participant’s work in connection with the nine standards.  

For the master’s portfolio the participant must show emerging competence in each of the standards.  For the EdS the participant must show emerging competence in each of the standards and established competence in five selected standards.  For the EdD and PhD the participant must show established competence in all nine standards.

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