Category: Practice-Based Doctoral Program

By Sanjeev Sridharan

In early March 2023 I was invited to be a guest in the Social Studies classes of Aiea High School (grades 11 and 12) for a “Social Commentary Slam.” The assignment for the students was to speak briefly on a social issue that concerned them. The students had to speak to a problem (and implicitly create a space for solutions) and not just about their problem. They had a choice of doing it individually or as part of a team. There were constraints on the form of the slam: it had to be poem, rap, or ‘hybrid’ — it had to be short (between 1 to 3 minutes).

The accidental guest and the power of the arts

I do not have any strong credentials to comment on such an event, even though I work in the field of evaluations of social and health interventions. I was intrigued by this invitation because I’m interested in the role of storytelling as part of social science/evaluation. I was invited by Dr. Desiree Cremer. I had been on her dissertation committee as part of her Doctorate of Education (EdD) degree at the University of Hawaii. The EdD is fundamentally about developing and nurturing leaders who are committed to social justice. Desiree has had a passion for arts and dance to foster social change. Coming from South Africa, she has many rich stories of how dance has been transformative, both in shaping individual lives and communities; she has a deep belief that dance/arts are critical to creating a society committed to social justice. She runs a fabulous podcast called “What Stirs” and a website called the Cooking Choreographer in which her passions for dance and cooking intersect and a number of issues relating to social justice have surfaced.

Creating spaces for personal storytelling: Social science as stories

The idea of a space in which brief personal storytelling as part of social commentary was encouraged as part of a social science class intrigued me. Considering that youth are sometimes characterized as disinterested and apathetic, the idea of creating a space for engaging these young students and capturing their realities as part of a social commentary was novel for me.

The poet Maya Angelou writes, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” The French filmmaker Godard writes, “Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form.” I was keen to learn more about the ability of the “social commentary slam” to surface stories, especially of the ‘untold’ kind –and raise important contemporary social issues. The slam also provided an exploration of the poetic medium to give form to complex social realities that the young experience. The topics that were covered were varied: they ranged from bullying to the oppressive powers of expectations to drugs in society.  

Some lessons learned

I normally don’t write blogs of visits or events, but this experience left me amazed. I write this to highlight a view of social science/evaluations that celebrates voice, creates spaces for individuals to speak their truth as part of social commentary, provides a space to understand the landscape of critical social issues as defined by the student themselves, and also a space of dialogue without judgement. Students spoke their truths, and there was a sense of community as the variety of topics were covered.

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There are three lessons I wish to share.

1. It was a lesson in humility about how little we know about the lived experiences of the young. As a parent myself I’m afraid I had not created such spaces for dialogue and interaction. It is hard to create such spaces where individuals (young or otherwise) can speak their truths.
2. It was a lesson in the power of language. A focus on rap, poetry and slam created energy in which the form itself enabled a space for insights and personal truths to emerge.
3. For me it was also a lesson on how a “social science” needs to seek to create spaces for individual voices. As we try to create a world that is more inclusive and tries to understand different points of view, more of such spaces are needed.

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The philosopher Hannah Arendt writes, “Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.” I felt Desiree was successful in creating a space in which her students could share insights on social issues through personal stories without being forced into sterile boxes. I left the class with a sense that there are lessons here for how we approach research and evaluations in understanding how people see the world. A space for exchanging experiences, providing a community of support, the energy of poetic forms, and the constraint of keeping insights brief, all can contribute towards a more meaningful ‘social science.’ 

Charles Mingus said,

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”

Charles Mingus

The brief commentary slam provided a form and space for complicated truths to be expressed simply, awesomely simply.

Originally posted in November 2020

For the past few weeks, Sanjeev and I have been talking about the EdD program—about how it got started, how and why it was conceived, in what ways it was different from the PhD, and what we can learn about it for implementing similar programs.  These conversations have been stimulating and intellectually rewarding and have offered me the chance to take a fresh look at the planning the program and the early years of its existence.

Basically, the EdD got its start because of the unsuitability of the PhD program for students who are uninterested in careers in educational research and are looking instead at an advanced degree for teachers, administrators and others educators interested in developing expertise in aspects of their professional life.  When we began to plan the program, in 2009, calls for reform were being made at the national and local levels. Lee Shulman’s large study of the PhD and the establishment of the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) made a strong case for two doctorates in education: the PhD for the preparation of researchers; the EdD for practitioners. At the state level, the appeal for an EdD was strong among the Hawai’i education community, especially from the private schools. Graduate division and the university administration were also major backers of reform along the lines advocated by Shulman. The college dean, Christine Sorensen, gave strong support for the development of the EdD and was instrumental in forging a close connection between the COE and CPED.

When planning for the EdD got underway in 2009, the planning committee members were in agreement that the program should be significantly different from the PhD. At the time, there was quite a lot of negative talk around the College that the committee was conspiring to produce a “PhD-lite”—a sort of watered down version of the PhD stripped of some of some of the more hard-nosed courses like statistics, and with an easy-option dissertation involving a small practitioner-style project rather than a real research study. But we were not in the least interested in taking this easy route. Our aim was not to produce a lesser program but to create one that was qualitatively different—one that would prepare students to be practitioner researchers.

I felt from the beginning that the EdD needed more than just a program rationale with the usual statements addressing needs and outcomes. It needed a philosophical basis that challenged some of the dominant views in education about what constitutes research. There’s a pervasive view (in academic publishing, for example) that practitioner research really isn’t proper research. It is supported by a widespread scientism in education that is narrow in outlook and exalts a view of science derived from a philosophical theory about knowledge acquisition, fashionable in the 1950s, called positivism.

Let me illustrate how this scientistic outlook shapes and perpetuates faculty and student thinking by reference to a narrative that was frequently communicated to incoming doctoral students. The talk, aimed at both inspiring the students and informing them about how to become researchers, invited them to picture knowledge as a wall built up brick by brick through the sedulous efforts of researchers. Their task was, first, to achieve familiarity with the wall; then, to locate any gaps; and ,finally—this would be their research project—to fill in the gap with a research brick of their own devising. One has to admire the simple economy of this image—the nicety of its linear sequence of tasks beginning with command of the subject matter and followed up with a trial/test/ordeal by which the doctoral candidate might demonstrate their skill in research. It fits handily with the sequence of the typical PhD program—course work followed by dissertation.  I imagined the story being recounted to the accompaniment of Pink Floyd—“Hey teacher! Just another brick in the wall!.” What was never addressed was the idea that removing bricks through falsification (Popper), or dashing down the whole darned structure and building something else, instead (Kuhn) could count as research.

What’s wrong with this picture?  It ignores the diversity of different research traditions; it focuses on the discovery of causal relationships and generalities; and, it ignores the importance of context and local knowledge. Wittgenstein viewed our craving for generality as the reason why traditional scientific research disdains the particular case: “Our craving for generality has another main source: our preoccupation with the methods of science…instead of ‘craving for generality’ I could also have said ‘the contemptuous attitude towards the particular case’”

A better account of knowledge for the EdD (and PhD), and one to which I have been giving more thought, is one that Dewey advanced, especially in his later works. It is the view the various sciences and research traditions are arts—similar in some ways and different in others, from what we typically call the arts, such as music composition and painting.  As Dewey puts it: “if modern tendencies are justified in putting art and creation first…It would then be seen that science is art, that art is practice, and that the only distinction worth drawing is not between practice and theory, but between those modes of practice that are not intelligent, not inherently and immediately enjoyable, and those which are full of enjoyed meanings.(LW 1: 268-269).  This was what I felt was a more inspiring message to the new EdD students—a vision of the practitioner researcher as an artist—as persons engaged in a worthwhile activity that would bring about personal and institutional development.

A dialogue whose time has come

Originally posted in November 2020

Hunter and I have been in a dialogue for the past 12 years on how best to build a graduate program focused on practice. This dialogue, which was rare and episodic for more than 11 years, has become very focused in the past three months. The timing of this specific dialogue — in the middle of the pandemic with calls for systemic reform in multiple sectors of society including academia – is not accidental.  At a time in which the world is asking questions around systemic racism, it is important to reflect deeply around how a doctoral program can add value in re-shaping and reforming issues of structural inequities in the educational system. There is a sense that the time is now that academia holds itself to account in challenging itself to enhance its focus on more meaningful social change. My sense is that an assumption that all academic activity is socially meaningful or adds value to society is a stale idea whose time has passed.  

Equally important is a need to move beyond an elitism that a practice-based program is somehow intellectually inferior to a more traditionally based PhD and traditional notions of scholarship. I believe that thinking comprehensively from an evaluative lens will demonstrate humility of learning that is much needed at a time in which there are larger questions being asked widely about the value added of academia.

The context of this invitation

The University of Hawaii’s EdD program provides a good setting to raise such important questions. The EdD program attempts to shape “educational leaders who work collaboratively, apply research and theory, reflect critically and ethically, and utilize broad, interdisciplinary perspectives to recognize, create, advocate, implement, evaluate, and enhance spaces of social justice across Hawaiʻi and beyond.”   Three cohorts of students have now competed the EdD journey. The first two cohorts have had a chance to put the scholarship that they learned during the EdD program into practice. Our interest in inviting you to this dialogue is to learn from your experiences as practitioner-scholars.

What I hope to learn from you

In the past couple of years, I have moved from academia to a funding organization working in India. One of my interests as a funder is to explore how best can universities train practitioners to solve real problems like maternal mortalities, malnutrition, and lack of widespread immunization. I believe that your reflections as part of this forum will have consequences that go beyond the EdD or even Education. There is a need to rethink how academia can better train scholar-practitioners. I strongly believe that your reflections will help my work in India working primarily in public health and health systems.

The EdD as an Experiment

It is important to view the UH EdD itself as an experiment. It is an experiment that was informed by a few key philosophical tenets but also deeply shaped by the political realities of academia. Some of the initial conversations with Hunter focused on how best evaluations could help in assessing the success of this experiment.  Thinking evaluatively needed to serve a developmental function. It is important to think dynamically about the success criteria of such an experiment. This dialogue hopes to raise questions around such success criteria while incorporating and recognizing that success of such an experiment should incorporate very heterogeneous views of what constitutes success. Further, the key stakeholders’ own definitions of what constitutes success might change over time. An important aspect of such an experiment is to obtain feedback from its primary stakeholders about how their own perceptions of success have changed over time.

Heterogeneous landscapes of change

Change is rarely linear or straightforward. There is a need to pay attention to the heterogeneous landscapes in which systems and organizations are located. Change rarely happens as a result of a single action. Actions are embedded in heterogeneous landscapes with multiple intersecting contexts.

This raises a deep question: How do we teach the importance of context? In education research, it has surprised me that in a discussion of ‘what works,’ there is often limited discussions of contexts. This forum provides an opportunity to dialogue (and learn from students’ experiences) on the relevance of contexts, including historical contexts. The simple fact that this discussion was taking place in a place such as Hawai’i with such rich indigenous history makes the discussions around historical context even more relevant. Such a focus on local contexts with understanding of deep roots in history is needed for the emergence of decolonized solutions. 

Some questions for you

In order to shape your reflections, I have a few questions that will help move some of the areas that I’m still quite uncertain about towards greater clarity. Please feel free to reflect on any or all of these questions, or other questions that you feel are more relevant to better develop the scholar-practitioner.

1. The Value-added of the program: Has it helped you better understand educational systems? Has it helped you understand bottlenecks that need to be addressed to solve local problems? Has it improved your leadership skills, and your ability to get things done?
2. Feedback on improvement: In what ways could the training have been more relevant to address your local problems? Were there classes that could have been taught that were not? Were certain processes needed to help promote practitioner-based scholarship? Were those practices missing? Could more have been done to promote a collaborative ethos?
3. Post-EdD Supports: In your judgment, has the relationship with the program continued post-graduation? Could you count on the department to provide supports? As you work on local practice and problems after the degree, do you have ideas on how such post-EdD supports can be strengthened for new cohorts?
4. Fungibility of learnings: Finally, what are lessons that are relevant from your experiences with this program that might be relevant for a practitioner program focused on public health?

I strongly believe that thinking evaluatively will throw light on how best can academic programs be structured to balance rigor with utility; balance reflection with pragmatic action. My view is that there is a desperate need to move beyond stale discussions of what constitutes rigorous knowledge that often are self-serving and favorable towards more traditional views of academia. We need a view of rigor that is respectful of the challenges of practice. I believe strongly that your reflections will help develop deeper understanding of a revised theory of change for academic programs focused on practice, understanding of capacities needed to sustain a thriving EdD program, and perhaps most importantly, shed light on the values that matter for promoting practice-based scholarship.  In my judgement, the practitioner-scholars from the University of Hawaii EdD program are well positioned to provide such feedback.

By Desiree Cremer, EdD

Everyone has their thoughts and ideas about distance learning. Some see its misgivings while others thrive. Regardless, as of now, distance learning is my reality. My school will continue with distance learning for the entire third quarter. Teachers adapt and mold to their circumstances. At first, there are the usual hiccups, and with practice, a flow emerges, soon familiarity. Teachers do what we usually do, teach.  

Our students show up, at least the majority do. Parents and teachers have to be on their toes because of schedule changes, maybe for testing, or just accomodating the many “mandate stuff” that is so ordinarily common in a public school. As soon as the students log on, we enter into another world, our digital classroom. The camera provides me a view into their world, and they have a view into mine. We see each other, and I get a snapshot into their world. 

Distance learning and COVID-19 expose our educational institutions’ old cemented practices, such as evaluating student achievement. We need to reevaluate the metric under COVID-19. We hear from educators, is it measurable? Well, a student who logs on from a cramped studio apartment with spotty internet might need to log on a couple of times. The student sitting with younger siblings around a table all distance learning helps them with their technological needs. These students show up, and they are present, for they are teaching us during these challenging and uncertain times that we need a different metric.   Students who log on and remain engaged while the television blares in the background and noisy conversation swirl around them. Students who learn in bedroom corners, closets, outside, and in bathrooms. Students who log on from a driving car, sitting patiently in the backseat, listening to the lesson. A teacher pretending that it is not happening just in case it may shame the student. These students have the determination to learn and adapt, rising above their circumstances. They deserve a medal for their perseverance. Educators, what metrics do you have for their resilience? I suggest you include in your assessment empathy, compassion, and logging on as a fortitude for what you determine as a success.

Distance learning has deepened my appreciation for some of my students; I am impressed by their resolution. In contrast, learning online and looking at my students on the screen shows that life continues behind them. One can hear the busy household noises indicating the sounds of survival. It is what happens behind them that frames the story of distance learning. Before the pandemic, we saw our students and had no idea what happens with them beyond the classroom. This pandemic reveals inequities in education, technological access, and poverty. And as educators, we see it and have discussed it repeatedly in the past few months. There is no manual or playbook for evaluating education in the COVID-19 world. However, as educators, we could lighten up and stop holding our students to the pre-COVID-19 metrics. We all learning through discovery during these uncertain times.  

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By Steve Nakasato

During a breakout session at the 2020 Hawaii Schools of the Future conference, I initiated conversations about Improving Results with Different Measures (the 36-minute presentation is linked below). I asserted that schools must continue to strive for state accountability measures, but I also asked leaders to simultaneously track emerging improvements founded on Adaptive Outcomes. Adaptive Outcomes are dissimilar to Technical Outcomes such as standardized assessments and accountability measures like chronic absenteeism. Instead, Adaptive Outcomes are qualitatively tracked as emerging improvements continuously change as each iterative idea is applied. By focusing on both Technical and Adaptive Outcomes, the Leadership Team was able to invent innovative ideas for overwhelming difficulties that once anaesthetized professional conversations — such as how can teachers engage the most vulnerable students? 

Navigating Technical and Adaptive Outcomes

Technical Outcomes Measure and codify data-Increase test scores-Systematized operating systems-Enforce conformity, consistency, fidelity-Add funding, resources, and programs-Generalize knowledge and skills -Adhere to prescribed processes

Adaptive Outcomes Improving practices, protocols, and products-Nurturing relationships and contexts-Facilitating learning systems-Soliciting creativity, originality, and innovation-Striving for continuous learning -Building empathy, collaboration, and change-Employing iterative process and new ideas

The journey was exhausting however over time, the leadership team learned to relentlessly apply adaptive approaches grounded on Adaptive Outcomes. In turn they learned that change ideas are not predetermined but unforeseen; surprisingly inspiring; and, generated from social, cultural, and community contexts. There is no question that improving school results is complex and daunting for even the most experienced school team, and striving for better results require staunch leadership, steadfast direction, and an improvement mindset measured by Technical and Adaptive Outcomes.

Watch the video | Improving Results with Different Measures

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

Reflected on my educational doctoral professional practice program at the University of Hawaii

by Desiree Cremer, Ed.D.

On the first day, the doctoral candidates sat in a circle around a pillar that interfered with the spatial design; somehow, awkwardly, it blended in with the environment. Introductions and sharing went around the room. It was so powerful and intense to listen to the incredible stories from the candidates. It completely overwhelmed me.

When it came time for me to speak, my voice was finding its way through the inner tunnels of my packed emotions, hidden, and suppressed. I felt my body trembling in my introductions, and the quiet inner voice got louder as tears flowed down my cheeks, saying my name proudly. Desiree Cremer from Cape Town, South Africa, my parents sacrificed for me to be here. My goal is to earn my doctoral degree in education because I believe students should have access and equity to the arts. Growing up under apartheid, I never had this opportunity.

This introduction was my release and emancipation in the doctoral program. I found a diverse generational family. An educational family that shares stories celebrates, argue, laugh, disagree, and then move on. The process of our doctoral educational journey I describe as a wave that washes onto the beach and then pulls back and keeps on coming. I rode this wave with my community of practice family. We took all our classes together, worked in groups, shared ideas, and pulled each other along during challenging times. Out of these interactions and collaboration, I developed unexpected relationships beyond the educational doctorate program, moving together from one course to another for three years, bonds you. Power shifts between teachers and principals quickly dissipated as relationships developed out of the shared collaborative experience.

The interdisciplinary nature and diversity are the program’s strengths. It opened safe spaces for emerging leaders and provided a platform for many voices. The support I received within the program gave me the courage to do an autoethnography for my dissertation, revealing, at times painful, yet empowering. Some of the course offerings profoundly affected my practice and gave me the mechanisms to speak evaluatively about a dance education program.

After the Ed.D., I returned to my school to teach dance, back to my job. Everyone around me wanted to know why I was at school. “You have a doctorate, you supposed to be out there,” and the conversation went, “Use that doctorate.” I started questioning myself, am I supposed to leave, get another job? Should the Ed.D. program provide support to their doctorates after graduation? How can they help? Who receives access?

The Ed.D. gave me beautiful moments, such as presenting my dissertation at Oxford Brookes University in England alongside some of my doctoral families. For now, I love what I do, providing access and equity to all who want to experience the movement of dance. During this pandemic, I am working on finding mind and body balance. And along the way, unexpectedly, discovering another voice, the blog.