Support Services Categories and Requirements

Minimum Education Requirement: A Master’s degree in the field of Education. Degree must have included or was supplemented by at least 24 semester hours in a field related to the work of the position to be filled (such as statistics, data collection, data analysis, data reporting, research methods, etc.), of which at least one course was in research methods and at least two courses were in statistics. The course work must have been completed at or accepted by a regionally accredited U.S. college or university.

The undergraduate/graduate course work must have included study in at least three of the following five areas: 

1. Learning theory, psychology of learning, educational psychology: Study of learning theories as they relate to the systematic design, development, and validation of instructional material. 

2. Instructional design practices: Study of the principles and techniques used in designing training programs, developing design strategy and models, and applying design methods to the improvement of instructional effectiveness. 

3. Educational evaluation: Study of the techniques for evaluating the effectiveness of instructional/educational programs, including developing written and performance tests and survey instruments, and determining reliability and validity of evaluation instruments. 

4. Instructional product development: Study of the techniques appropriate for developing training materials, including identifying learner characteristics, specifying objectives, applying training strategy, validating training materials, and evaluating training. 

5. Computers in education and training: Study of the application of computers in education and training. 

Specialized Experience Requirements (5 years): Specialized experience is experience gained while applying research principles and methods that required broad and thorough knowledge of one or more scientific fields or interdisciplinary areas to educational research work and experience in teaching, educational research, development of educational materials and aids, educational testing, educational administration, or comparable activities in an elementary and/or secondary school, a research contractor that partners with systems, state education system, federal education agency, and/or higher education level, which has clearly demonstrated success in the application of principles, methods, and techniques of education and familiarity with current developments in PreK-12th grade education, training and research. 

Professional Licensure/Certification Requirement: None.