The Teaching and Learning concentration consists of 34 credits completed in two years.
Note: Additional licensure requirements vary.
The research thesis or professional project will be a written work of publishable quality. The options below are intended to be meaningful and rigorous. All projects should be approximately 50 pages with additional pages containing references and appendices.
The curriculum project is designed to allow teachers to apply knowledge from the program and evidence from research and literature from the field to their own curriculum and context. In order to do this, they will build the curriculum project around content they are teaching in one of their classes. The ultimate purpose of this project is to demonstrate your ability to, a.) plan instruction that is congruent with current literature on best practices; b.) implement evidence‐based instructional practices (in other words, be able to justify your instructional decisions); c.) Reflect upon key learnings from creating the curriculum for this project.
*This option is recommended for anyone who is considering continuing their graduate studies and earning a terminal degree.
This is a carefully written scholarly paper of approximately 50 pages that contains documentation from primary and/or secondary sources and involves data collection. The thesis must demonstrate a sound research design of a quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods nature. The focus should fall within the field of education and is often specific to the content area you teach.
In this project option, students will write a 50-page (approximately) literature review. This is an appropriate project for a student who enjoys reading and synthesizing research and literature and has a desire to dig more deeply into a particular topic. Concordia College faculty from a wide range of disciplines serve as advisors throughout the thesis process. The expertise and special interests of the faculty are matched to the topics in pairing cohort members with an advisor.
A final, edited copy (PDF) of your capstone project must be submitted to the program director in order to gather signatures and to receive a final check from the program. When all signatures have been gathered, a final signed version of your capstone will be sent to you.
You may choose to order hard copies of your project through HF Group (formerly Houchen Bindery), a company Concordia has worked with for years to produce hard copies of capstone projects.
Visit the HF Group website to begin the order process. You will send them the signed PDF version of your capstone.