An Adaptive Model for a Rigorous Professional Practice Doctorate

As part of the current re-envisioning movement in professional practice doctoral education, the culminating activity and subsequent product have received heightened scrutiny. This chapter responds to the mandate that, in order to differentiate herself from her sister, the research-based PhD dissertation, the EdD's capstone exercise and culminating product arise through a practice-based, pedagogically appropriate application reflecting the philosophy and principles established for a problem-based dissertation in practice. Inexorably bound to context, and therefore unique in purpose, practice-driven models reflect a range of purposes and formats. This chapter presents a model that engages improvement science methods, the four dimensions characterizing a problem-based thesis, and the lens of contemporary thinking on the professional practice degree. The disquisition is an alternative capstone framework that affords doctoral candidates the opportunity to develop the qualitatively distinct ‘empirically-grounded know-how' of practitioner-scholar thinking.

Guiding Principles for Quality Professional Practice Dissertations

In this chapter the authors share the guiding principles for professional practice dissertations developed and studied within their online EdD in Educational Technology at the University of Florida. While these guiding principles were developed approximately four years before the call for chapters for this book was released, they align nicely with at least three pertinent themes that frame this book (i.e. the importance of addressing critical problems of practice, applying research rigor involving real theory and inquiry and demonstrating impact of research). The authors make explicit connections between their guiding principles and these themes and provide examples of how the themes have played out in dissertations completed in their program. The authors then provide implications for others seeking to structure (or restructure) the way dissertations are conceptualized in their professional practice problems.

The Scholarly Practitioner as Steward of the Practice

This chapter reports on the results of a study that analyzed 83 student interviews and 225 student responses to open-ended questionnaire from across 21 schools of education to better understand how these students have become scholarly practitioners as a result of their education doctoral (Ed.D.) program. Applying the theoretical frames of the education profession and the Steward of the Practice, the chapter utilizes a qualitative approach to learn how students and graduates of CPED-influenced Ed.D. programs describe becoming Scholarly Practitioners and learning to apply theory to their own practice as a means to change local context.

Educational Leaders and the Program Evaluation Dissertation with Logic Model

This chapter explains what educational evaluation is, why it makes sense to teach about evaluation (program, policy, and curricular) in educational leadership programs, information about two programs (the University of Rochester and Alabama State University) that have successfully incorporated evaluation dissertations, the components of an evaluation based dissertation that include a logic model, and other items to consider for those who are interested in implementing this type of dissertation into a professional practice doctorate program. Incorporating evaluation into doctoral coursework yields many benefits to students. Initially, it provides a real world based approach for teaching the rigorous research skills required for the eventual completion of a dissertation.

Practice as Research

This chapter highlights the potential for live pieces of work, rather than specifically designed research projects, to be used as the basis for the outputs of professionally-oriented doctorates. Drawing on some examples from a transdisciplinary ‘practitioner' doctorate in an English university, it discusses how work that is designed to result in change or development can, if approached with sufficient methodological consideration, provide an intellectually robust basis for developing new knowledge that not only has application in practice but can also be worthy of academic dissemination. A case is made for what is here termed ‘practice as research' being regarded as an archetypal model for the practitioner or ‘Type 3' doctorate.

Dissertation Redesign for Scholarly Practitioners in Educational Leadership

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the innovative Dissertation-in-Practice model being implemented in the University of Missouri Statewide Cooperative Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership (EdD Program). This doctoral program develops scholarly practitioners who are able to address critical problems of practice through the use of theory, inquiry, and practice-oriented knowledge. While these skills are utilized to create purposeful, professional products throughout the program, the redesigned Dissertation-in-Practice at MU is intended to further showcase the impact of the students' work as scholarly practitioners through dissemination-ready components. The chapter includes the history of the program and a description of the process through which program faculty redesigned the dissertation from a traditional five-chapter model to its current six section form. This restructuring, which includes dissemination to scholars and practitioners, is detailed. The chapter concludes with emerging supports for the scholarly practitioner graduates.

Identity, Commitment, and Change Agency

It is becoming almost cliché to assert that doctoral scholars should integrate theory and practice and address critical problems of practice. Less charted territory, however, moves beyond integration of theory and practice to the cultivation of scholars' as committed people who possess a compass of values and vision as they act as catalysts for change in the world of practice. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the kind of cultivation needed to effect the transformation required for doctoral scholars to move beyond translation of theory to practice to the next step of catalyzing change. This chapter explores the intersection of core constructs or strands for creating scholars as change agents – identity, commitment and civic agency. These elements are examined from a theoretical framework, and in context of a case example of a doctoral program that bridges the academy and the community.

The Role of Theory in EdD Programs and Dissertations in Practice

Labaree shed light on the problems particular to the preparation of educational researchers who are practitioners. This is especially salient to faculty working in newly deigned EdD programs affiliated with the Carnegie Project in the Education Doctorate (CPED) because they are working to develop scholarly practitioners with dissertations in practice. Key to this preparation is the need for EdD students to balance what they learn, or their new cultural orientation, from normative to analytical, personal to intellectual, particular to universal, and experiential to theoretical. This chapter focuses on Labaree's difference of the experiential to the theoretical. The chapter provides varied definitions of theory and what this means for practitioners working to find answers to problems of practice while seeking doctorates. The theories EdD students find most relevant are provided along with samples of theoretical frameworks from actual dissertations. Conclusions lead to a critical yet, hopeful view of theory and practice.

Supporting Scholar-Practitioners toward Doctoral Degree Attainment

This chapter examines the role of practitioner as scholar; overviews doctoral completion statistics and Time To Degree (TTD); reviews the literature on barriers and facilitating factors to dissertation completion with particular focus on part-time students who work full-time; and outlines ongoing departmental strategies for improving doctoral completion rates and reducing the time to degree. The aim of this chapter is to serve as a resource for doctoral students, faculty dissertation advisors, and program directors who wish to strengthen programs and practices to achieve the common goal of timely dissertation completion leading to the earned doctoral degree.

Becoming Practitioner-Scholars

This chapter explores how educational leaders learn to engage in site-based inquiry within a leadership-focused doctoral program through coursework and dissertation research. There is a dearth of research on educational leaders engaging in research, and specifically in local inquiries, that speaks to how leaders enact practitioner research in their institutional settings and how this kind of engagement in inquiry influences their leadership practices. This chapter is the outgrowth of considerable program and dissertation structure development over 14 years and argues that there is considerable value, for mid-career leaders and for the field, in doing rigorous research as part of their doctoral studies. The chapter describes how dissertations are conceptualized, cultivated, and framed within the Mid-Career Doctoral Program in Educational and Organizational Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania; it explores the relationships among coursework, dissertation research, inquiry-based leadership practices, and the cultivation of scholar-practitioners in leadership.