Curriculum Revision for Rural Leader Preparation: Clemson University’s Commitment to Rural Educators in Uncertain Times

• In Event: Navigating Equity-Oriented Praxis in Rural Spaces in a Polarized Political Landscape

Abstract

Objective
The purpose of this case study is to explore the ongoing curricular revision currently taking place in the Department of Educational and Organizational Leadership Development (EOLD) at Clemson University. EOLD offers educational leadership training through three tracks: a master’s degree program, an Ed.D. in school improvement, and a Ph.D. in educational leadership. To better serve our school and district-based leaders, faculty in the department have created several programs to infuse improvement science into their practice through grant-funded professional development and agreements between school districts and Clemson to offer reduced tuition for our masters and Ed.D. programs. As these efforts have expanded over recent years, faculty in the EOLD department determined that a curriculum revision was necessary to better serve rural school leaders. At the same time, the realities of political discourse in 2024 and 2025 require discretion when discussing serving marginalized individuals (Sawchuk, 2022). To understand what our students need regardless of the political realities of the day, we present our efforts to reform our Educational Leadership master’s degree to best serve our rural students.

Conceptual Framework
Our case study is influenced by improvement science, as our Ed.D. program requires an improvement science Dissertation in Practice (Author, Year; Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 2024). Our data collection and analysis processes will use discourse analysis as a conceptual framework, which includes assessing the language used in our process, assessing power structures, and contextualizing data in their specific time and place (Bottema-Beutel et al., 2021; Fairclough, 2013).

Method
The curriculum revision started in Spring semester of 2024, in which all faculty members who serve students on the K-12 side of our program met for day-long sessions to assess and update the curriculum. This intense and time-consuming project yielded data in the form of documents, recorded sessions, and written artifacts. Data sources include minutes from our curriculum revision meetings, recordings from virtual sessions, and written artifacts from work sessions. Using document analysis, we will engage in a discourse analysis using deductive and inductive coding (Saldaña, 2022). Codes will be merged into themes for our presentation. The themes will be presented in the findings section of our presentation.

Ongoing Results
Final results are unavailable as the curriculum revision will continue into the Fall 2024 semester. Results will be completed before the annual meeting in April 2025.

Scholarly Significance
As previously mentioned, our curriculum revision occurs during a time of unique political and economic strife in the United States. As scholars who care deeply about rural communities, we are engaging in this curriculum review to better serve marginalized rural people, as those are our constituents. This case study will provide insight into asset-based school improvement in rural schools during these difficult times. We also hope to share a potential framework for program revision so that other departments can engage in their own curricular review to serve rural schools.
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Authors

• Phillip D. Grant, Clemson University

• Parker Morse Andreoli, Clemson University

• Edwin Nii Bonney, Clemson University

• Brandi N. Hinnant-Crawford, Clemson University

• Hans W. Klar, Clemson University

• Noelle A. Paufler, Clemson University