The doctorate is a highly specialized degree that opens up a wide range of career opportunities in the field of education. While many people assume that earning a doctorate in education only leads to careers in academia or school administration, the truth is that the degree can qualify you for a variety of roles both inside and outside the classroom. While many individuals with a doctorate in education pursue traditional academic roles as professors and researchers, numerous other career opportunities are available to those with this degree. In this article, we will explore some of the jobs that a doctorate in education qualifies you for.

Perhaps the most obvious career path for someone who has completed doctoral programs in education is to pursue a role in academia. This might involve teaching courses in education, conducting research in the field, or mentoring graduate students. Here are a few examples of academic roles that someone with a doctorate in education might pursue:

Academic Roles

Professor

Many colleges and universities require their faculty members to hold a doctorate degree in their field. In the case of education, professors may teach courses in subjects like educational psychology, curriculum design, or educational leadership. They may also conduct research in these areas, publish academic articles or books, and serve on committees or advisory boards within their institution.

Department Chair

In some cases, a professor with a doctorate in education may be promoted to serve as the chair of their department. This role typically involves overseeing the department’s curriculum, managing faculty members, and developing policies that support the department’s mission and goals.

Academic Dean

Another potential career path for someone with a doctorate in education is to serve as an academic dean. In this role, they would oversee one or more academic departments within a college or university, work with faculty members to develop new programs or initiatives and ensure that the institution is meeting its academic standards.

Education Policy Roles

Another area where a doctorate in education can be useful is in the field of education policy. This might involve working with government agencies, non-profits, or educational institutions to develop policies that promote student success and educational equity. Here are a few examples of education policy roles that someone with a doctorate in education might pursue:

Education Consultant

Many school districts or educational organizations hire consultants to help them develop and implement new policies or programs. A consultant with a doctorate in education might specialize in areas like curriculum design, assessment and evaluation, or teacher professional development.

Education Policy Analyst

Another potential career path for someone with a doctorate in education is to work as a policy analyst for a government agency or non-profit organization. In this role, they would analyze data, research current policies, and recommend new policies or initiatives supporting student success and educational equity.

Education Advocate

Someone with a doctorate in education might also choose to work as an advocate for educational issues. This might involve lobbying for policies that support students and teachers, working with community organizations to promote educational equity, or writing articles or blog posts that raise awareness about important issues in the field.

K-12 School Leadership Roles

Most of the job roles occupied by individuals who have a doctorate in education are roles held by leaders in K-12 school districts. Some of the job roles include:

School Administrator

One of the most common career paths for individuals with a doctorate in education is becoming a school administrator. School administrators are responsible for overseeing the daily operations of schools, from managing budgets and resources to hiring and supervising staff. They also play a critical role in setting policies that affect the educational outcomes of students. This would include job titles such as: assistant principals, principals, district directors, executive directors, chiefs, assistant superintendents, deputy superintendents and superintendents.

Curriculum Specialist

Curriculum specialists are responsible for designing and implementing educational programs that align with the goals and objectives of a school or district. They work closely with teachers and other educators to develop instructional materials and assessments that promote student learning and achievement.

Corporate Training Roles

While it may seem surprising, a doctorate in education can also be useful for those interested in corporate training roles. Many companies are recognizing the importance of ongoing employee development and are hiring professionals with advanced degrees to design and implement training programs. Here are a few examples of corporate training roles that someone with a doctorate in education might pursue:

Corporate Trainer

Corporate trainers use their expertise in education to design and deliver training programs for employees in various industries. They develop training materials, conduct training sessions, and evaluate the effectiveness of training programs. Corporate trainers work for corporations, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations.

Learning and Development Manager

In this role, someone with a doctorate in education might work with a company’s leadership team to develop training programs that align with the organization’s goals and values. They would also oversee the implementation of these programs and evaluate their effectiveness.

Instructional Designer

An instructional designer with a doctorate in education might specialize in designing training materials and courses for adult learners. They would work closely with subject matter experts to create relevant materials for adults that complement adult learning styles.

In conclusion, a doctorate in education offers numerous career opportunities beyond traditional academic roles. Whether you aspire to become a school administrator, educational researcher, or corporate trainer, a doctorate in education can help you achieve your professional goals while making a positive impact on the field of education.

Are you interested in pursuing a doctorate program to advance your career? If so, check out our available in-person, hybrid, or online doctoral programs in education today!

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Another common requirement is a teacher portfolio; thankfully, this is also something educators often need to compile for job interviews as well, so it can serve a dual purpose. Read on to find out more about what a teacher portfolio is and how to create one that will stand out, as well as how you can use it to advance your career through graduate education.

What Is a Teacher Portfolio?

A teacher portfolio is a collection of information about a teacher’s practice. Teacher portfolios are typically used for two purposes: to reflect and improve upon one’s teaching career, and as an evaluative product for objectives like evaluations, promotions, graduate school acceptance, and more.

Teaching portfolios can include various items from lesson plans to evaluations, letters of recommendation, samples of student work, course syllabi, etc. There are many different ways to organize a teaching portfolio, some of which we will touch on later on in this article. Overall, the portfolio typically consists of a table of contents, the body of the portfolio, and then several appendixes.

Things to Include in Your Teacher Portfolio

There is not a curated list of items one must include in a teaching portfolio; it will differ from educator to educator and be based on their experiences, teaching philosophy, and their reasoning behind creating a portfolio.

In general, though, most portfolios include items from the following list:

• Personal information such as a resume and educational philosophy
• Teaching artifacts like lesson plans and samples of student work
• Professional documents like evaluations and letters of recommendation

As I stated before, the portfolio needs to be organized and, at minimum, include a table of contents to make it easy to access and understand. It should be a carefully curated list of documents that serve a specific purpose. The teaching portfolio is not a scrapbook of memories from one’s teaching career and should not be designed as such.

A Note About Electronic Teaching Portfolios

More and more teachers are gravitating towards electronic teaching portfolios as opposed to hard copy collections. Electronic portfolios are more accessible to a wider audience, such as potential employers or graduate admissions faculties. They can include multimedia documents such as teaching videos and online programs you implement in your classroom. You can also include voiceover text to explain the various parts of your portfolio.

Education changed drastically with the introduction of the internet, and even more so in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era. Students are completing their lessons online more frequently, and teachers must be able to incorporate online learning to stay abreast of current trends. Compiling an electronic portfolio is just one more way to demonstrate teaching excellence in an ever-changing field.

Why Is a Polished Teacher Portfolio Important for Graduate School?

A well-thought-out teaching portfolio can be an excellent asset to accompany a graduate school application. It can be used for a variety of purposes, including to showcase what classes/ content an educator would like to teach if they are accepted into a graduate program.

The act of creating the portfolio will help graduate students guide their development and success. It forces them to analyze their teaching experience thus far and prepare for future roles, as well as define their teaching style and approach. These are all important aspects for someone to understand for their continuing education and career as they help define potential career goals.

Including evaluations in one’s teaching portfolio is also a great way to demonstrate to a college or university how you react to feedback and constructive criticism, two things that are ever prevalent in graduate studies. Be sure to take time to talk about how you use the feedback as an opportunity for self-reflection, and how you incorporate it by adapting your teaching methods.

Finally, the development of a teaching portfolio can help students determine which institutions of higher learning will be the best fit for them. Once they’ve determined their teaching style and preferred methods of learning, they can use this newfound knowledge to seek out a school that will best meet their educational needs.

Graduate students who take the time to create a carefully curated portfolio will not only be more likely to be accepted into a graduate education program, but they will be more prepared for interviews as well, whether they be for graduate admissions or teaching positions. They’ve taken the time to really think about who they are as an educator and put in the work to make sure this is reflected in their portfolio, and this self-reflection will be evident when they speak about their career aspirations during an interview. Thus, it’s a no-brainer; start working on your portfolio today and help yourself achieve your future career goals.

Teachers never stop learning; check out our available graduate degree programs  to hone your skills and promote lifelong learning and academic excellence.

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Thus, as college neared, I had to narrow down my choices as to where I was going to earn a degree and potentially play collegiate sports. I was not a great athlete, but one that loved to play. The highest level of college baseball that recruited me was an NAIA school in the Texas panhandle. I was the model of a NCAA Division III athlete; a decent ball player who lacked the size and quickness of the division I and II athletes, and a pretty good GPA to boot.

My Path to Becoming an Educator 

I found a liberal arts school about 60 minutes north of Dallas, Texas. There I could play football and baseball and pursue a communications degree. After about one year there, I realized that I really enjoyed sports enough that coaching would be a career for me.

The college I attended offered a way to earn a master’s degree in education that you could earn in five years. It was essentially a minor in education and the degree you earned could go toward the certification field you would teach in the classroom. The opportunity was too great. I could coach the sports I love, get the degree I wanted, and see if broadcasting or coaching and teaching would work out first. The rest, they say, is history. The doors in coaching and teaching were opened more clearly than the broadcasting route.

I have been fortunate that throughout my life that I still worked as a Sports Information Director and the play-by-play guy in different situations, so I have been able to use my communications degree from the broadcasting angle.

But that was icing on the cake, as I was able to teach technology applications at the middle school level in the same town that needed a pitching coach at a local college. This marriage of location and jobs worked for ten years. Then I felt called into school administration, where I have been for the last ten and one-half years.

The communication degree covered everything from the technical side to the practicum side, to the public speaking side, and to the psychology behind communications. This gave me the tools I need to be successful in the classroom.

How a Communication Degree Helps my Education Career

Skills to Verbally Deliver Content

At one point in one of my higher education classes, I argued that it should be a requirement for anyone in the teacher programs to have one or two speech communication classes. The rationale was simple: as a teacher you must know how to deliver your content, know your audience, and have the pathos, logos, and ethos behind what you are teaching. There was no better place for these math, history, and science majors to learn how to take their content to their audience. This is what teachers do every day.

Maintaining an Audience

In many ways we are sages on a stage talking about math, history, science, computers, etc.
We must manage and maintain our audience and make sure when our students leave our class that they received the message we wanted them to receive. Speech classes cover this in great detail, and we practiced it, often.

Communication Psychology

There was the psychology behind communication. Things like having the background knowledge of your audience and how that impacts how they will interpret the message you are sending them. How to overcome common communication barriers with your audience was always beneficial. We need every edge we can get when delivering messages to middle school students and how they might interpret discussions.

Better Understanding All Backgrounds

Finally, in the end, the education world is a people-first world. The number of hours and communications you make with other humans who are your age, nowhere near your age, and have totally different backgrounds is something you do every day. Your audience also changes between students, parents, colleagues, board members, bosses, etc.

In every aspect of my education career, I was communicating. All of the tools I learned in my communication classes helped me in the classroom, to working with other people, and earning my speech certification.

In many ways, I have been more successful because of my communication background. From my classes doing the daily announcements live to the school to how I present information at board meetings now. The communications degree gave me the lens to help me navigate the education world — from students to adults.

Interested in pursuing an advanced degree? Check out our available graduate programs and get started today!

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How I Became an Educator Without a Bachelor of Education

When pursuing an undergraduate degree in psychology, my course study involved child development, sparking my interest in a possible education career. The child development courses in the psychology department covered the early stages of development through adult development, giving any psychology undergraduate a solid foundation to be helpful in a classroom setting.

The child development courses also required observation hours to be conducted, and what better place to watch the development of children than in a classroom environment? While conducting these observations, my psychology studies helped me understand how students were learning based on the behaviors I observed in the classroom. For example, some students were more physical and learned better while moving about; this is also known as kinesthetic learning.

Other students sat and intently listened to the teachers’ instructions and could answer questions with amazing recall. It could be safely assumed these students would be classified as auditory learners. Observing these behaviors in the students and watching their “light bulbs” go off, intrigued me, and inspired me to become a teacher, even though I had not experienced any college course in the Education Department at my university.

After earning my Bachelor of Science in Psychology, I enrolled back into college to complete the eight class requirements necessary to earn my state teaching license. Six of the eight courses were methods classes involving teaching specific areas such as reading, math, social studies, science, physical education, and music in an elementary setting. The most important requirement of each course was to present several lessons in front of the other students.

The professor recorded each lesson, providing criticism that would add up to a grade and sharing the lessons with the class to encourage peer review. The last two courses required were an entry-level education history course and a classroom management class. Upon completing all classes, I was certified to teach Kindergarten through sixth grade in my home state. Later in my career, my state license and my PRAXIS scores provided me with reciprocity to receive a state teaching license from a different state.

How My Master’s Degree Helped My Career in Education

After completing eight years of teaching various elementary grade levels and one year of middle school literature, I had decided to pursue a Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership. I was privileged to be led by some very influential principals at the two schools and I knew that I wanted to lead a school and empower other teachers. In my ninth year of teaching, I decided to enroll in a university to earn a master’s degree.

The program I selected was a two-year commitment, so while teaching in the classroom during the day, I studied and attended graduate classes in the evening. The coursework required more observations to be done with the current administration at my school and other schools. Quickly I used my knowledge of psychology to notice the behaviors of leaders and compared that with their effectiveness at their school. Once again, my undergraduate degree in psychology lends itself to my studies in education.

The final project in my graduate program involved a research project to determine the best assessment tools. Since I was currently teaching in the classroom, I could conduct the research with my students. Once my graduate studies concluded, I was fortunate to be hired as assistant principal of my current school. After seven years of assisting the principal, I applied to become a principal.

My Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership was the requirement to become an administrator. Still, my undergraduate study in psychology is an important resource for understanding the personality traits of over 60 faculty members, 650 students, and 400 families.

I rely on my Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership to help develop school culture, curriculum, public relations, and budgets. My psychology studies assist me with handling daily human resources issues at school.

Do You Need a Bachelor of Education to Become an Educator?

Educators earning an undergraduate degree in education spend four years with the clear goal of knowing that after earning a Bachelor of Education, they will enter a classroom to teach. These students often spend one semester of their education as a student teacher, learning from an established teacher, on-the-job training, but without compensation. Students with an education bachelor’s degree may have also become a member of a network of first-year teachers. This network can share ideas and provide the camaraderie needed in a demanding profession.

Teachers without an education bachelor’s, like myself, immersed in the required courses to earn the state’s teaching license and sometimes might be already teaching while completing course work, are usually compensated. These teachers are called Lateral Entry or Emergency Certified teachers. These educators typically do not have a support group of other teachers that can share ideas, and teaching may not be their first career. Teachers with experience in another career can lend them expertise in one or more subject areas, which will enhance teaching in a classroom. Many teachers coming to the classroom after spending years in business usually hold exceptional organization, negotiating, and time management skills that enhance the classroom setting and benefit students.

For myself, my psychology degree and my first career experience in business, along with a Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership gave me the perfect blend of skills to be an educator. However, the one ingredient all educators share with or without a Bachelor of Education is passion to teach any grade level and subject. Passion and a genuine desire to make a difference in the world make a great educator.

Interested in becoming an educator or advancing your career with a graduate degree? Check out our available graduate programs and get started today!

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