Ph.D. in Education

Jennifer Duer 
studies poverty alleviation tools to improve the well-being of children and families,
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Educational Policy & Social Context (EPSC)

The Educational Policy and Social Context area seeks to understand and develop policies and practices aimed at promoting learning and the developmental well-being of children, youth and adults. Policy and social contexts include schools, families and communities. Adopting an interdisciplinary research perspective by drawing from economics, sociology, developmental psychology, and anthropology, EPSC faculty and students use a range of quantitative, qualitative and mixed method approaches to understand impacts of existing policies, to design and evaluate new policy and intervention models, and to understand the relationship between policy making and implementation. With a commitment to promoting social mobility for disadvantaged populations, faculty engage with diverse communities to understand how local, state and national policy can best achieve that goal.

EPSC Specializations

Common features of our early childhood education, K-12 education and higher education specializations:
All five of our education policy specializations focus on policies intended to promote learning and development, particularly among disadvantaged populations. Work in all five policy areas shares a number of common features: rigorous methodological approaches used to understand policy impacts and variation in those impacts; where possible, mixed method designs combining qualitative and quantitative methods; a focus on promoting achievement and other positive developmental outcomes among children and youth.

early childhood development and policy

• Our work on early childhood combines an interdisciplinary approach to the study of human development with a focus on the policies that affect young children. We use a variety of methods such as lab experiments, field-based studies, longitudinal data sets, and policy evaluations to examine early childhood socio-emotional, physical, and cognitive development. Our approach to early childhood is broad, and encompasses research, practice and policies addressing educational programs such as pre-K, Head Start and Early Head Start, but also less formal child care settings and parenting programs.
• School of Education Faculty:  Bailey, Connor, Duncan, Farkas, Jenkins, Kim, Vandell
  

policy in k-12 education

• K-12 schools are the central institution for promoting learning, academic and socio-emotional development, opportunity, identity, and norms among children and youth in the United States. Our work examines and evaluates the contemporary and historical policies and laws defining the K-12 U.S. education system. We also consider the political decision-making processes that shape educational opportunities for students in- and outside of schools. The K-12 policy areas we cover include governance, desegregation, equity and access, accountability, choice, finance, curriculum, instruction, discipline, and school staffing. These include policies made at the federal, state, and local levels.
• School of Education Faculty:  Ahn, Arum, Brouillette, Campbell, Connor, Eccles, Farkas, Goodridge, Kang, Kim, Penner, Rhodes, Santagata, Vandell, van Es, Villavicencio

policy in higher education

• Much of our work in higher education focuses on community colleges, but also includes four-year institutions and the transitions to post-secondary education and from community colleges to four-year institutions. Our work uses a variety of research methods to explore potential ways to improve the learning opportunities and college experiences among students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
• School of Education Faculty:  Arum, Baker, Duncan, Eccles, Xu
• Affiliated Faculty:  Frank, Iloh
• UCI Education Research Initiative 

program measurement and evaluation

• Program evaluation encompasses a range of skills and approaches, all of which are taught and practiced by area faculty. These include the formulation of interventions, mixed method approaches to evaluating them, knowledge of measurement issues in the assessment of program impacts, and an ability to estimate program implementation impacts based on analyses of secondary sources of data.
• School of Education Faculty:  Arum, Bailey, Baker, Brouillette, Campbell, Connor, Duncan, Farkas, Jenkins, Kim, Penner, Reich, Rhodes, Vandell, Villavicencio, Xu

policy, culture, and institutions

• Schools are institutions that possess their own cultures, norms and rules. They are also embedded in the cultures and institutions of society at large. Both students and teachers bring their own cultures to school; these both affect, and are in turn affected by, the cultural and institutional structures of schools. Our work in this area examines how student, family, educator, and school cultures and structures intersect with policy to shape educational and social opportunities for students.
• School of Education Faculty:  Ahn, Arum, Baker, Brouillette, Campbell, Conchas, Eccles, Farkas, Goodridge, Jenkins, Penner, Santagata, van Es, Villavicencio
• Affiliated Faculty:  Frank, Iloh

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EPSC PRIMARY FACULTY
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• Richard Arum
• Rachel Baker
• Drew Bailey
• Liane Brouillette
• Shanyce Campbell
• Greg Duncan
• Jacquelynne Eccles
• George Farkas
• Shane Goodridge
• Jade Jenkins
• Emily Penner
• Katherine Rhodes
  
• Deborah Vandell
• Adriana Villavicencio
• Di Xu

EPSC AFFILIATED FACULTY
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• Frank Bean
• David John Frank
• Constance Iloh
• Julia Lupton
• Rubén Rumbaut