Educational Psychology and Research

Educational Psychology & Research Degree at KU

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Research Skills

Doctoral preparation in the Educational Psychology and Research program implies a strong emphasis on developing strong research skills. Accordingly, every doctoral student must demonstrate these skills by completing three projects or demonstrating competence in three skill areas. Examples of such skills include:

• the submission of a scholarly paper to an appropriate professional organization,
• the development of a position paper on an issue related to the field of educational psychology and research, or
• the application of statistical procedures to a dataset.

Supervised College Teaching Experience

All Ph.D. students in EPR are expected to have college teaching experience. This experience is often gained through Graduate Teaching Assistantships.

Ph.D. Residence Agreement

Doctoral students must be enrolled full-time for at least two semesters in a row during their doctoral training. Consecutive full-time enrollment for two semesters can be attained from Fall, Spring, and Summer semesters.

Comprehensive Examination

Following completion of the majority of the specialization course work, a student must complete and pass a written preliminary comprehensive examination and then a comprehensive oral examination.  The candidate, in consultation with his/her advisor, assembles a comprehensive examination committee. The program advisor and the exam committee define the nature of these examinations. During the semester in which students plan to take their comprehensive exams, they should begin enrolling in dissertation hours.

Dissertation

Upon passing the written and oral portions of the comprehensive examination, doctoral candidates, in consultation with their advisors, assembles a dissertation committee. For information on post-comprehensive enrollment and general information about doctoral programs, see Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Studies section of the online catalog.

The minimum requirement for dissertation enrollment at the University of Kansas is 18 credit hours.  However, typical doctoral students in the Educational Psychology and Research program enroll in 21 to 24 credit hours on average to complete the dissertation process.

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