To start your master's experience at HGSE, you'll choose and apply to one of our five Programs, where you'll develop expertise in a specific area of education practice that aligns with your professional aspirations. Each program is designed to prepare you to meet the challenges of your chosen career path, and each will include the flexibility to customize your learning experience through core course, electives, and by selecting an optional Concentration.
Today’s learning landscape requires strong leadership abilities, change-management skills, and deep organizational experience — whether you seek to transform the education sector to promote equity or to launch an innovative education venture. Through our Education Leadership, Organizations and Entrepreneurship (ELOE) Program, you will attain the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to lead with impact in diverse roles, including preK–12 schools and districts, higher education, nonprofits, government, philanthropy, and entrepreneurial ventures.
For individuals who want to expand their preK–12 school leadership skills, ELOE offers the School Leadership Pathway, which includes a Principal Licensure option.
Our Education Policy and Analysis (EPA) Program will prepare you to lead and engage in education policy development, analysis, and change in a variety of organizations and settings. You also will learn how to scale effective education practices and understand how to leverage policy in order to expand their reach. In addition to providing a shared set of knowledge, skills, and professional competencies, EPA allows you to focus on specific contexts and interests, preparing you for roles in policy development, research, analysis, and organizational leadership in the United States, as well as in developing countries around the world.
Whether you are interested in exploring a direct service role, engaging in counseling work, starting a nonprofit, or pursuing doctoral research, our Human Development and Education (HDE) Program prepares you to support the unique needs and individual growth of learners. Through immersion in theories and pioneering research in child, adolescent, and adult development, you will have opportunities to examine different developmental domains — including cognitive, emotional, social, moral, and neurological — as well as to design strategies and interventions to promote healthy development.
HDE offers a School Counseling Licensure Strand for students interested in pursuing Massachusetts licensure in school counseling.
In our Learning Design, Innovation, and Technology (LDIT) Program, you will tackle promising and challenging frontiers of education — innovating education technology, leveraging the science of learning, and developing powerful pedagogies to improve learning outcomes. Our program prepares you to lead educational change around the world, whether you are an instructional designer or learning specialist, project director or program manager, software designer or media producer, formative evaluator or museum educator, start-up founder or partner.
In our Teaching and Teacher Leadership (TTL) Program, you will gain the skills you need to design and lead transformative learning experiences that change lives, advance social justice, and help generate the best outcomes for all students. Whether you are an experienced or novice teacher, our approach to teacher education will engage you in a community of practice that enables you to build core competencies, work alongside faculty and school-based mentors in meaningful and lasting networks and pursue a wide range of career goals. The TTL curriculum enables novice teachers to pursue Massachusetts initial licensure in secondary education, while experienced teachers may focus on instructional leadership, coaching, and/or teacher development.
TTL offers the Teaching Licensure Strand for students interested in earning their license to teach at the middle and high school levels in U.S. schools.
You can personalize your learning by choosing a Concentration — an area of specialty that can be combined with your Program to create customized pathways and specific expertise. While optional, HGSE’s Concentrations allow you to deepen your knowledge in a particular context or area of education, through courses and co-curricular activities ranging from applied learning experiences to professional development opportunities to speaker and networking events. You'll foster connections with peers who share similar interests, explore your passions, and lay the groundwork for your career. You will express interest in a concentration on your application and can officially “declare” one concentration before the add/drop deadline. Concentrations require 6-12 credits of coursework. For examples of possible pairings of Programs and Concentrations, and the personalized pathways they can create, please go here.
In our Arts and Learning (A&L) Concentration, you can explore the integral role the arts play in education — across art forms, age groups, and learning environments. Through a combination of coursework, cultural events, and participation in a vibrant arts community, this concentration will prepare you for roles in teaching, research, and leadership throughout schools, communities, and arts and culture organizations.
Ensuring that all young children have access to quality early childhood education will take a combination of professionals in roles ranging from preschool teachers to curriculum developers to policy analysts. Our Early Childhood (EC) Concentration enables you to explore opportunities within early childhood education research, practice, and policy, while collaborating with cohort members who share your dedication to the field.
By participating in the Global, International, and Comparative Education (GICE) Concentration, you will join a diverse community focused on transforming education by examining the power of global and comparative learning. Through core courses, small group advisory sessions, and co-curricular community learning opportunities, you will gain preparation for a career in education policy, teaching, or organizational leadership.
From addressing issues of college access and affordability to preparing first-generation college students for success, the field of post-secondary education has never been more complex. With activities that include coursework, study groups, events, and internships, our Higher Education (HE) Concentration helps you prepare for a career as a college administrator, educational foundation director, education-related consultant, and more.
The Identity, Power, and Justice in Education (IPJE) Concentration is a community of students and faculty across programs who want to actively challenge and disrupt different forms of oppression in education as a part of their current and future work. IPJE students will have the opportunity to explore critical theories that provide frameworks for analyzing oppression across multiple identities, develop key dispositions for holding space on topics of injustice, and build capacity to create education spaces that aim to eliminate oppressive conditions and inequitable outcomes.
The Literacy and Languages (L&L) Concentration will enable you to examine the role of literacy-related developments on student achievement, as well as explore language and literacy issues from a developmental, academic, and cultural perspective. In addition, the concentration’s robust array of courses and community learning opportunities will help inform your future work as a classroom teacher, learning specialist, policy leader, or preK–12 administrator.
