Program Learning Outcomes - Education, MA

By the end of the program, students graduating will be able to:

• Distinguish, articulate and critically assess learning theories in education.
• Articulate the nature of knowledge and the relationships between theory, evidence and practice.
• Participate in a culture of disciplined inquiry demonstrating the skills and dispositions to critically assess and use research in education and digital technologies.
• Advance inquiry into authentic, ill-defined educational problems, recognizing the complexities of multiple components of a problem / solution in relation to the whole.
• Demonstrate abilities to effectively manage and coordinate academic projects, both individually and collaboratively.
• Articulate, interrogate, and critically reflect on different educational standpoints, including one’s own.
• Effectively use a wide range of appropriate media/technology tools for educational communication, data collection and analysis, and instructional design, development, implementation and evaluation.
• Distinguish, articulate and critically assess the varied and sometimes contested values and impacts associated with digital technologies.
• Make evidence-based, well-reasoned decisions about optimal uses of digital technologies (e.g., interfaces, online tools, languages) to support learning and development.
• Design, produce and critically evaluate meaningful and useable digital artifacts, modes of communication, and / or environments.
• Demonstrate an informed understanding of how and why learners of all ages interact in digital contexts.
• Clearly identify meaningful and relevant research problems for inquiry and investigation, as well as relevant theoretical / conceptual underpinnings.
• Locate and evaluate secondary research works/publications using a variety of strategies and tools (including primary and secondary sources).
• Articulate and critically assess quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches to research, especially as applied to the fields of education and digital technologies.
• Critically evaluate information/evidence-based on criteria appropriate to the source (including validity, reliability, timeliness, bias, transparency, bracketing, negative cases, triangulation).
• Organize and synthesize a significant and meaningful set of secondary resources to create a literature review/report.
• Discriminately use digital tools to conduct and /or communicate research results effectively.
• Produce original research (theoretical, empirical and/or reflective in nature) that has the potential for publication.
• Identify, articulate and critically analyze assumptions, values, biases, ideologies and evidence that underpin educational arguments, claims, policies, and data.
• Identify, analyze, and apply discipline-specific theoretical or empirical arguments using discipline-specific criteria.
• Articulate and critically evaluate potential ways that uses of digital technology inform and are informed by social context, community conditions, needs, wants and interests.
• Use previous or developing knowledge of digital technologies to create, remix, adopt or apply solutions to educational and societal problems or questions.
• Formulate and articulate meaningful questions, hypotheses, and arguments that build and advance knowledge in the field of education and digital technology.
• Demonstrate fluency, accuracy, and clarity of thought using multiple literacies while engaging in critical conversations, which address philosophical, educational, and technological questions and problems.
• Prepare educational materials that effectively address and engage a variety of audiences (academic, professional, and general) for a range of purposes, including presenting and synthesizing research, informing, instructing, and persuading.
• Apply appropriate scholarly communicational conventions, including APA guidelines.
• Demonstrate skillful and respectful educational collaboration, dialogue and negotiation.
• Show skill in evidence-based reasoning and argumentation.
• Articulate the tentativeness and under determination of knowledge, both theoretical and practical.
• Critically reflect upon and articulate personal and disciplinary limits of knowledge, both theoretical and praxis-based, and the resulting ambiguities in interpretation and analysis.
• Engage in ongoing reflection and debate on a wide range of critical issues in education, including the legitimacy of multiple ways of knowing and various uses of digital technologies.
• Incorporate divergent, international perspectives when analyzing, evaluating, and articulating positions and solutions.
• Recognize and articulate how societal structures, particularly privilege and oppression, operate in education policy, practice and outcomes.
• Demonstrate autonomy in one’s own work processes and pursue inquiries in directions one has set out for oneself, routinely going ‘beyond the problem as given’.
• Demonstrate an ability to arrive at decisions in complex situations, through mapping out the fullest possible set of actors, agents, conditions and challenges.
• Cultivate effective practices that support consultative and (where possible) democratic decision-making.
• Demonstrate personal, professional, and academic integrity in all aspects of scholarly work, including appropriate ethical behaviour for conducting research.