John J. Gleason, Director
(603) 897-8592
Benoit Hall, Room 101
jgleason@rivier.edu
Rivier University extends a tradition of excellence in education, counseling, and behavioral health services with its Doctoral Program in Leadership and Learning. The preparation of transformational leaders expands the mission of the University and the dialogue between faith and reason for leadership roles in the service of others.
The doctoral program is attractive to educators and professionals from a variety of disciplines, fields, and settings at various levels of professional practice, service, and leadership. We believe that the preparation of transformational leaders is based on engaging a diverse cohort of students in the practice of self-reflection, systematic inquiry, transformational change, and professional collaboration. In this process opportunities are created for the personal transformation that is necessary to facilitate change with others. Our goal is to prepare leaders to reinvent organizations, institutions and systems within our communities towards serving the needs of others. Each of the program’s core courses is a vehicle to promote the examination of leadership, learning, and research.
Through doctoral study we seek to expand existing research on leadership and learning by systematically investigating research questions that have developed from the student’s personal and professional experience. The outcome of this process is the emergence of innovative and creative leaders committed to understanding the process of learning for personal growth and improved achievement, the nature of change and transformation, and the implications for policy analysis and formation.
GOALS
Transformational Leadership
Pedagogy for Leadership
Reflective Practice of Learning
Pedagogy for Reflective Practice
Systematic Inquiry
Pedagogy for Inquiry
Human Similarities and Differences
Pedagogy for Diversity
Professional Collaboration
Pedagogy for Professionalism
Personal and Professional Transformation
Pedagogy for Transformation
OBJECTIVES
Transformational Leadership
Pedagogy for Leadership
Knowledge
To understand the various models, constructs, and theories of leadership and their application for participants in social settings.
Skill
To understand and apply the various forms of leadership to particular individuals, groups, organizations, and systems.
Dispositions
To demonstrate the characteristics and qualities of transformational leadership to the understanding of the context of different systems, organizations, and institutions.
Actions
To demonstrate the ways in which personal and collective actions must consider the social, cultural, moral, ethical, economic, and political contexts of others.
Reflective Practice of Learning
Pedagogy for Reflective Practice
Knowledge
To understand the theory and nature of human growth and development learning, and research for the ways they influence the formulation of leadership and vision within organizations.
Skill
To think systematically and critically about our own ways of learning as a vehicle to understand substantive change for ourselves and others.
Dispositions
To develop intellectual curiosity and openness to self-examination in the discussion of the practices and policies intended to support and improve learning.
Actions
To demonstrate critical reflection on the personal abilities, interests, and needs that develop from the process of inquiry.
Systematic Inquiry
Pedagogy for Inquiry
Knowledge
To understand the various traditions and forms of systematic inquiry and research in the physical and social sciences.
Skill
To move from systematic thinking about practices to practices based on research incorporating research in decision making for the development, refinement, and implementation of policies and practices.
Dispositions
To achieve improvement and reform through the application of scientific principles to understand practice, processes, and policies.
Actions
To conduct research on a topic of personal interest and professional significance through systematic inquiry.
Similarities and Differences
Pedagogy for Diversity
Knowledge
To understand the range and variation in the similarities and differences in human nature that affect leadership and learning, communication and interaction, and the development of the self and participation with others.
Skill
To develop and implement policies, practices, and processes that affect the nature and conditions of leadership and learning, interaction and communication, and the development of the self and others.
Dispositions
To cultivate appreciation for understanding of the multiple ways that individuals develop and learn that influences their participation in organizations, services, and agencies in educational and social services.
Actions
To understand persons of diverse backgrounds, interests, abilities, needs, talents, and challenges to apply this understanding in their own research data.
Professional Collaboration
Pedagogy for Professionalism
Knowledge
To demonstrate knowledge of theories of the social and cultural processes that affect learning in social settings and systems.
Skill
To demonstrate leadership among peers and colleagues in the creation of a learning and working community with professional development that leads to the acquisition of specific knowledge, skills, dispositions, and actions for members of the community.
Disposition
To demonstrate a commitment to ethical and moral action in the attainment of social justice for all and, in particular, the poor and the powerless.
Action
To state the implications in the student’s own research in terms of the benefits for others.
Personal and Professional Transformation
Pedagogy for Transformation
Knowledge
Understanding of the emergence of the self as a critical component for understanding the other, the practices that are supportive and helpful of others, and the ways transformation of organizations, institutions, and systems evolve from the self to others.
Skill
To acquire a critical perspective on the nature and quality of help and support that is necessary for and beneficial to others.
Disposition
To identify the transformational leadership qualities that students hold and to recognize those qualities in others.
Action
To see in your own research, the implications for others; the adoption and application of an ethical and moral perspective; a commitment to distributive and social justice; and the economic, social, and political effect the research holds for others.
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