Curriculum & Courses

Where inquiry shapes leaders

The M.A. curriculum moves from foundations to fieldwork to finished research — all of it in person, on a residential campus, with a cohort small enough that your voice shapes every seminar.

In your first year, you’ll build the theoretical and methodological tools to ask hard questions about education systems. In your second, you’ll apply them — culminating in original research that you’ll present to the campus community.

This is not a teacher credential program, and you don’t need to have extensive teaching experience to apply. It’s a degree for people who want to lead, research, and transform educational systems at every level.

Three ways you'll learn

Semester Seminars

These courses follow a graduate seminar format: discussion, peer feedback, independent research, and close work with a faculty mentor. Most required courses are semester-length.
 

Intensive Block Courses

Two courses run in concentrated three-week blocks — three hours daily, with student presentations, case studies, and group inquiry.
 

Independent Research

Your thesis anchors the second year. An optional Summer Research Program between years one and two lets you conduct fieldwork domestically or abroad, supported by the Summer Research Travel Grant.
 

2
years to completion
4:1
student-faculty ratio
6
students in average cohort

Year 1

Examines the relationship between school and society — how social forces drive change, create structural constraints, and open space for innovation. Students analyze school reform in national and cross-national contexts. (Fall Block | 3 credits) 
 

Traces the foundations of contemporary schooling through classical and modern thinkers — Socrates, Confucius, Dewey, Freire, Piaget, and Makiguchi — to ask: What knowledge is most worth having? What is the best way to educate students? (Fall Semester | 3 credits)
 

Surveys leadership theory across cultural perspectives and builds core research skills: databases, peer review, participant sampling, interviewing, field notes. Designed to cultivate students' confidence and voice as original researchers and scholarly contributors to the field. (Fall Semester | 3 Credits)

Applies theories of human cognition, emotion, and motivation to educational settings, with a focus on what drives positive individual development and social change. (Fall Semester | 3 Credits )

 

Frames leadership as the facilitation of relationships between people and institutions. Includes a two-day shadowing experience with local educational leaders — structured observation in real practice. (Winter Block | 3 Credits )

 

How do global forces shape education differently across cultures and contexts? Who are the key actors driving educational change worldwide? Surveys the theoretical, historical, and methodological foundations of comparative and international education, from its early twentieth century origins to the present. (Spring Semester | 3 Credits )

 

Equips students to lead transformational change by harnessing the power of education. Draws on a deliberately wide range of thinkers — Alinsky, Dewey, Freire, Gorbachev, Ikeda, Marx, Nkrumah — to build a nuanced understanding of how ideology and context shape the possibilities for meaningful and enduring change.
(Spring Semester | 3 Credits)

 

A survey of quantitative and mixed-methods research, covering research design, data analysis, and reporting. Builds fluency in descriptive and inferential statistics while examining the ethical, legal, and cross-cultural considerations that shape every stage of the research process.
 (Spring Semester | 3 Credits)

 

The Summer Research Program, which occurs between the first and second years, is a non-credit-bearing instructional option designed to enable graduate students to conduct MA thesis research. This may include work at one or more discrete locations in the United States or abroad. Students may identify a field site(s) where they can obtain first-hand experience and pursue research in an area of scholarly interest.

Year 2

Examines the legal and policy contexts that govern educational decision-making and the rights of communities to influence those decisions. Considers how state and federal law, case law, and institutional policy intersect with a leader's values to shape ethical decision-making in practice. (Fall Semester | 3 Credits)

 

Practice-oriented. Students learn needs assessment, budget planning, stakeholder engagement, and program evaluation from the perspective of someone who has to make it work. Fall Semester | 3 Credits | Required

 

Initial thesis development under faculty supervision. Students engage with existing research on their topic and share work-in-progress to receive feedback from faculty and peers. (Fall Semester | 1 Credit )

 

Reviews types and purposes of assessment, how to choose the right tools for different contexts, and how to communicate results in ways that build community trust. (Fall Semester | 3 Credits )

Thesis work continues. By the end of this course, students have completed their introduction, literature review, and methods chapters. (Winter Block  | 3 Credits )

 

Where research becomes contribution. Students complete the thesis, present monthly progress at a colloquium, and deliver a public defense at the end of the semester. (Spring Semester | 6 Credits )

 

Research beyond borders

Between your first and second years, the Summer Research Travel Grant funds fieldwork anywhere in the world. The research students bring back has examined refugee policy in Germany, poverty reduction in Ghana, and Indigenous rights movements in Latin America. Since 2015, cohorts have traveled to South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia — original scholarship with a passport.

I know of no U.S. master’s level program that focuses on global leadership and world peace. This program is definitely one for the 21st century and is international in perspective. For a potential educational leader who wants to make a difference in the world Soka is the place where it happens.

–Fenwick W. English, R.Wendell Eaves Senior Distinguished Professor of Educational Leadership, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Explore more in Graduate Studies

Program Overview Meet the Faculty Apply Now