by Veselina Lambrev
How do we ensure that the experiences of students in a practice-based program have helped built empowerment and confidence as scholarly-practitioners?
And, how do we use this knowledge to build into a vision of where the program should go next?
Not too long ago, an EdD student who was defending her dissertation in practice—the product of a three-year long practitioner-research endeavor—was told by a member of her committee that her work was ‘too good for an EdD’ and that she should had done a PhD instead. I do not think that the faculty member meant ill with this comment; actually, I genuinely believe that the remark was meant to be a sincere compliment to the student. However, this episode is one of many in which our students are unintentionally prompted to feel like “PhD-lites” (Shulman et al., 2006, p. 27); moments when their research is being de-valued because of its practice-based nature.
In the last decade or so, there has been a philosophical and epistemological debate surrounding the education doctorate. Prior to that, the EdD was often confused as a less rigorous version of the PhD, intended solely to advance the professional credentials of school leaders (Perry & Abruzzo, 2020). From authors who openly critiqued the EdD stating that expectations, learning objectives, and curriculum need to update for school leaders to be able to implement actual changes (Levine, 2005) to opinions arguing for a more radical shift in the way we imagine what kind of graduates we prepare—the field has witnessed a major move to shaping the identity of the EdD from a “PhD-lite” to a professional research doctorate (Colwill, 2012), i.e., providing research training as embedded in practice.
A strong impetus for the change has come from the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) and its affiliate institutions that have been working together to re-imagine, re-claim, and re-conceptualize the EdD as a degree for the preparation of a new type of educational practitioners (Perry & Imig 2008). As an instructor and advisor of EdD students in two CPED inspired programs, my interest has revolved around this idea of preparing graduates in practice-based programs to become ‘scholarly practitioners’ (CPED, 2010). This relationship underlines a stronger connection between the scholar and the practitioner and calls for designing the experiences of our students as a theoretical learning situated in practice (Dewey, 1904).
It often takes years for such epistemological debates to change the academic landscapes surrounding a doctoral degree. However, changing the academic conversation, I would argue, is not sufficient. While adding to the theoretical knowledge of what is most valued in academia—high-impact scientific journals—certainly adds value to conceptualizing a new philosophical identity of the EdD, there is work on the ground that is equally important. Work that directly impacts our students’ experiences in the EdD. Collaborating with cross-department faculty and community practitioners is, in my view, a vital aspect of the practice-based doctorate. The landscapes of the programs that I have been part of have proven this well—faculty from various disciplines and diverse expertise have brought significant value to our students’ research projects in advising on how to apply interdisciplinary theoretical lens to solve problems originating in the professional world. However, there is an important work that we, faculty teaching full time in the EdD, need to do and that is inviting our outside-EdD colleagues to ‘play’ with us in the sandbox where our students’ practices are being nurtured.
How do we start such conversations? I would argue that introducing the concept of ‘scholarly practitioner’ as an ontological aim of EdD preparation can be the starting point for such dialogue and a guard against misconceptions about the purpose of the degree. Value re-claiming dialogues of this sort need to happen in an inviting, creative, and democratic space—one that nurtures experiences of growth, challenge of previous certainties, and learning together.
References
Colwill, D. A. (2012). Education of the Scholar Practitioner in Organization Development.
Charlotte: Information Age Publishing.
Dewey, J. (1904). The Relation of Theory to Practice in Education: In The Third Yearbook of the National Society for the Scientific Study of Education: Part 1: The Relation of Theory to Practice in the Education of Teachers, University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, pp. 9–39.
Levine, A. (2005). Educating school leaders. New York: The Education Schools Project.
Perry, J. A. and Abruzzo, E. (2020). “Preparing the Scholarly Practitioner: The Importance of Socialization in CPED-Influenced EdD Programs.” In Socialization in Higher Education and the Early Career. Knowledge Studies in Higher Education vol 7, edited by J. Weidman and L. DeAngelo 129–146. Springer: Cham.
Shulman, L. S., Golde, C. M., Bueschel, A. C., & Garabedian, K. J. (2006). Reclaiming education’s doctorates: A critique and a proposal. Educational Researcher, 35(3), 25–32. doi:10.3102/0013189X035003025