In the United States, the higher education community is charged with the academic education of emergency management professionals. The present rate of natural disasters as well as the evolving threat of terrorist attacks have created a demand for practitioners who are solidly educated in emergency management knowledge, skills, and abilities. These conditions have in turn precipitated the aggressive growth of emergency management and homeland security academic programs in higher education, characterized as the most relevant development in the field of emergency management (Darlington, 2008). With the goal of accelerating professionalization of emergency management occupations through higher education, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Higher Education Program’s research efforts focused on developing a set of evidence-based competencies for academic programs. These were outlined in FEMA’s Curricular Outcomes (2011). This study explored how these evidence-based competencies are manifested in emergency management and homeland security academic programs and contributes to filling the gap in the literature on the implementation of FEMA’s professional competencies in academic programs, a consequence of legal constraints prohibiting the direct collection of implementation data by federal agencies. The results indicated a wide range of competencies were represented in program coursework with gaps in alignment identified in the five competency areas. The analysis also revealed the exclusion of homeland security topics in Curricular Outcomes (2011) which led to issues of operationalization. Lastly, instructors shared feedback to improve alignment while the researcher discusses key conditions for similar use of a responsive evaluation framework in academic programs. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education. / Spring Semester 2018. / March 6, 2018. / curriculum alignment, curriculum mapping, emergency management academic programs, evidence-based practice, professional comepetencies, responsive evaluation / Includes bibliographical references. / Linda Schrader, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Tamara Bertrand Jones, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Ralph Brower, University Representative; Marytza Gawlik, Committee Member; Motoko Akiba, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_654753 |
| Contributors | Samples, Malaika Catherine (author), Schrader, Linda B. (professor co-directing dissertation), Brower, Ralph S. (university representative), Gawlik, Marytza, 1973- (committee member), Akiba, Motoko (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Education (degree granting college), Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies (degree granting departmentdgg) |
| Publisher | Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text, doctoral thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (219 pages), computer, application/pdf |
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