Enacting a Cycle of Inquiry Capstone Research Project in Doctoral-Level Leadership Preparation
Over the last decade, the doctorate in Urban Education Leadership at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) has been redesigned to respond to two distinct but important challenges: (a) the challenge of creating greater distinction between the academic and professional doctorates, and (b) the challenge of improving the nature and quality of its principal preparation program. Within the context of a broader multi-year program improvement and redesign effort, program faculty designed and enacted an alternate Culminating Research Experience (CRE) for their doctoral students. This CRE emphasizes the leadership of cycles of inquiry for school-wide improvement over a two-year period of time and the subsequent analysis of this work using empirical and scholarly literature. The accounting provided in this article advances existing literature by making visible many of the important granular details associated with this CRE as well as considerations associated with its design and implementation within a doctoral-level leadership preparation program.