Project Updates

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The Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) is actively engaged with twenty universities across the country to advance reforms in the education doctorate. The following project updates describe some of the ideas, directions and plans for reclaiming the education doctorate on these campuses.

University of Connecticut

The Neag School of Education is making great progress in implementing its Ed.D. Doctorate of Practice. This fall, the program enrolled its first cohort of 10 students. The semester began with a newly designed, six-credit course sequence focused on developing students’ skills as consumers of research. In these courses, students learn how to read quantitative research articles, how to interpret and understand the findings, and how to apply the research findings to address problems of practice. (This approach differs from the more traditional doctoral courses that teach Ph.D. students how to set up and run statistical analyses to investigate research questions.) For the spring semester, students will continue their development as consumers of research in the area of qualitative analysis. The syllabi for a summer 2008 course on professional learning--the first case study sequence in the new program--is also developed and ready for implementation. Due to the initial success of the program, the Department of Educational Leadership is receiving a large numbers of queries from prospective students about enrolling in the next cohort.

Contact: Barry Sheckley, Head of the Department of Educational Leadership, Neag School of Education

Duquesne University

Duquesne’s working vision for engaging CPED is framed by its identity, particularly the part called "Scholarship for Schools." Within that frame, the work of designing and testing learning environments for its doctoral programs is focused by design-based research. Duquesne’s operational plan is to develop design proposals, test prototypes and study this process and its products. Duquesne has moved from a small leadership team to an interdepartmental coordinating committee that includes five working groups of faculty and doctoral students; a larger advisory group of alumni, faculty and administrators from Duquesne’s other professional schools; and community partners. The coordinating committee will contribute their perspectives to the design of new learning environments for the doctoral preparation of educational professionals.

Contact: Rick McCown, Center for Advancing the Study of Teaching and Learning

University of Florida

The College of Education’s Ed.D. pilot programs began this fall with three cohorts. The first cohort is comprised of students working on their Ed.D. and their administrative certificate for K-12- principalship. The second cohort includes K-12 leadership students who already have their administrative endorsement; and the third cohort is for students focused on higher education. These programs are “blended,” meaning the majority of instruction occurs on the Internet. The cohorts also meet face-to-face three weekends a semester. The faculty is continuing to hone the program’s core curriculum and signature pedagogies, and is currently discussing the capstone experience.

Contact: Linda Serra Hagedorn, Professor of Educational Administration and Policy and Dean of the College of Education

University of Houston

The College of Education faculty discussed a shift towards a professional practice doctorate at two large group meetings in the summer. In early fall, the faculty executive committee determined it would form a taskforce to study the differences between the Ph.D. and Ed.D. offerings. Informal comments from community partners will be sought, and a plan for future interactions will be determined.

Contact: Jacqueline Hawkins, Associate Dean, Institutional Effectiveness and Outreach, College of Education

University of Kansas

The School of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Teaching is revising its Ed.D. and Ph.D. degree programs to better reflect the unique professional roles each programs’ graduates will play in future positions and careers. Specifically, the department is considering changes to the Ph.D. that will substantially strengthen its research emphasis (within the social science paradigm), while they are reconceptualizing the Ed.D. to better address the needs of school practitioners. The department assures these advanced degree programs will have rigor and high standards; and in differentiating them, the department hopes to make each more congruent with its career profiles and student expectations. Other changes under consideration are the foci of each degree' major. The Ph.D. will maintain a specialized major focus (e.g. literacy) while the Ed.D. will have a broader more integrative stance (e.g. curriculum and teaching).

Contact: Marc Mahlios, Professor and Chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction

University of Kentucky

In August 2007, the University of Kentucky launched a revised Ed.D. program with an emphasis on community and technical college leadership. The first cohort includes 27 instructors and administrators from the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS), comprised of the state’s two-year institutions. The program’s delivery features an "executive" model in which UK faculty and cohort members meet once a month for weekend, face-to-face sessions at KCTCS locations. In between the monthly gatherings, cohort members use web-based formats for class discussions and assignments. The program is a result of collaborations across the Educational Leadership Studies Department and Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation Department at UK.

Contact: Deborah Bott Slaton, Associate Dean of Research & Graduate Studies and Professor of Special Education, College of Education

University of Louisville

The College of Education/Human Development is using parallel and inter-related strategies to establish a Practitioners' Doctorate in K-12 Leadership. Their first strategy is to develop a stakeholder committee comprised of college-wide and external community members. The committee will work as a whole and in small groups to study and identify core knowledge, signature pedagogies and laboratories of practice within several contexts, including other colleges of education and all doctorates at the University of Louisville. The College’s second strategy is to launch a pilot program in January 2008 that will consist of 15 to 20 practicing administrators. A steering committee of faculty, practicing administrators, and administrator interest groups is currently framing this pilot program. The program’s details and next steps will be jointly determined by the stakeholder committee, the pilot program steering committee, and the pilot program participants.

Contact: Robert Felner, Dean of the College of Education and Human Development

University of Maryland

The University of Maryland launched its Ed.D. program in Teaching and Learning Policy in October with the first student cohort of 18 students . The program’s focus is on teaching and learning policy, with research on teaching and learning infused throughout. For example, in addition to looking at policies that affect teaching and learning (such as high stakes testing and choice), the program also examines how one leads by teaching, what it means to create learning organizations, and how and why cognitive errors undermine implementation. Also, some minor changes in courses have been made. Students will be involved in three laboratory-type experiences that together account for almost half of their credits.

Contact: Willis Hawley, Professor Emeritus

University of Missouri-Columbia

Support for the CPED project at the University of Missouri-Columbia has grown as faculty understanding of the project has increased. Action research is now built into the two years of coursework in the revised Ed.D. curriculum, and faculty members are gaining insights into the use of this type of research for the capstone experience as they work with their advisees on their action research projects. Professional development seminars for Ed.D. faculty were also held the past two semesters, with the spring 2007 seminar focused on action research proposals and the fall program centered on problem setting and data collection. Another seminar is scheduled for April 2008.

Contact: Joe Donaldson, Professor and Assistant Director of the Statewide Cooperative Ed.D. Program, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

The Department of Teaching, Learning, & Teacher Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is designing an Education Doctorate cohort initiative that examines and values the work of practice. This program is concerned with enabling educators in K-16 and community settings to further the work of learning and be agents of change. It is committed to teaching and learning practice as a “complex and demanding art” (Schwab, 1970; Shulman, 1983); as such, students will continue to work at their respective places of employment while simultaneously developing new skills, experiences and insights as they acquire an Ed.D. This design encourages students to develop innovative ways to address the challenges of their particular settings. It also asks students to continually confront, consider and articulate the complex realities and challenges facing schools, colleges and communities today, and in the future.. Currently, the department is field-testing a selection of “arts of the practical” course offerings as cross-disciplinary and cross-emphasis choices in order to cultivate a culture of collaboration between scholars and practitioners. Each course will be designed to enable educators to concretely consider, negotiate, analyze and articulate the nature of learners, learning, teachers and teaching from multiple perspectives. The cross-disciplinary/cross-emphasis debates and deliberations will reflexively figure into the more focused studies of educational practice in later work. Also underway is planning for a core doctoral seminar experience. It will be designed to provide program continuity and it will ask participants to be students of the work of learning, as the scholarship of practice is mapped out, explored, researched and documented.

Contact: Margaret Macintyre Latta, Associate Professor and Graduate Chair (TLTE)

University of Nebraska-Lincoln, EDAD-UNL, Educational Administration Department

Graduate faculty are working to make clear distinctions between the Ph.D. and the Ed.D. degree. Several new developments include: a required residency; increased opportunities for Ph.D. students to be involved in research initiatives; and an increased emphasis on professional growth for Ed.D. students. They are also thinking about how to provide sufficient research tools to Ph.D. students who take distance courses.

Contact: Miles Bryant, Professor, Educational Administration Graduate Committee Chair

Northern Illinois University

The NIU educational leadership team is preparing to implement an extended, embedded and integrated internship model with its Ed.D. students. The model evolved over the past five years and is the product of collaborative efforts between NIU’s leadership team and the local school districts to develop a five-semester internship for Ed.S. educational leadership students. The doctoral internship will begin as students embark on their doctoral program. Initially the student, a district administrator (usually the superintendent) and a professor will meet to identify an existing school district issue/problem that will become a research focus for the student. As students complete their doctoral classes, they will be expected to bring newly acquired theoretical knowledge to the school setting. Students will learn from, as well as lead and collaborate with, other district personnel to create and implement interventions designed to address the identified district problems/issues. It is anticipated that this extended action research experience will yield rich questions and generate data for students to use in their dissertation study.

Contact: Jon G. Crawford, Assistant Professor, Leadership, Educational Psychology, and Foundations Department

University of Oklahoma

The Educational Administration Curriculum and Supervision program is working directly with the Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) to refocus and reclaim the Ed.D. In the course of their reform work, they made several substantive changes to the program. First, they developed a program of study designed specifically to prepare building-level leaders for an urban environment. Second, they decided to use a co-teaching model, pairing a university professor and a practitioner (a district level leader). The two will work together to prepare the syllabus and deliver the content of each course. Third, they redesigned the dissertation into a culminating project that is intended to inform and/or manage a current problem in the school/district/community. The program’s first cohort of students is halfway through the course work and a second cohort has recently been admitted.

Contact: Gregg Garn, Interim Associate Dean, Professional Education, College of Education

Pennsylvania State University

The College of Education convened a working group to redesign the Ed.D. in Education Leadership. This doctorate is intended for graduate students who wish to have their work integrally connected in purposeful ways to public school settings. The program will have a strong focus on inquiry-based practice and data-driven decision making, and will feature a community of practice that includes people from the university and public school settings. Graduates of this program will work in public school leadership positions (teacher leadership or administrative leadership), or in institutions of higher education. The latter will sustain strong partnerships with public schools through professional development education or other similar relationships. The working group is beginning to develop a concept paper to inform the broader college faculty about the program. In addition, it is also focusing its efforts on the redesign of three key areas: (1) scholarship (with a focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning), (2) course work and experiences relevant to the degree program, and (3) an interdisciplinary area of specialization.

Contacts: Jacqueline Edmondson, Associate Dean, Teacher Education and Undergraduate Programs; and David Monk, Professor of Education and Dean of the College of Education

Rutgers

In order to prepare educational leaders who are innovative change agents, The Graduate School of Education is embarking on a new plan to reinvent its Ed.D. programs. The plan uses key ideas developed by CPED, and also includes the formation of a new steering committee comprised of faculty, students and key educational leaders from across the state. A fall faculty retreat will focus on how to implement the new Ed.D. in the 2010 academic year.

Contacts: Dorothy Strickland, Samuel DeWitt Proctor Professor of Education, Learning and Teaching; and Richard De Lisi, Professor of Educational Psychology and Dean of the Graduate School of Education

University of Southern California

The University of Southern California recently held a faculty conference to discuss the Ed.D. program’s “inquiry methods” courses. The agenda included a presentation of the current curriculum, student course evaluations, and recommendations for curriculum changes. Three goals of inquiry were also discussed, including: providing skills for on-the-job competencies necessary for effective leadership; preparing students for academic requirement in their course work; and preparing students to conduct research investigations as part of their thematic and individual dissertations.

Contact: Myron H. Dembo, Stephen Crocker Professor in Education

University of South Florida

The University of South Florida’s CPED team met with the faculty in August to review what had occurred at the spring convening. Since that first meeting, a departmental survey was created and dispersed to gather input about the current doctorate and how it can be improved, strengthened or changed. It is now in the process of being summarized. Once the survey results are disseminated, a faculty meeting will be held to discuss them, as well as what path would most benefit the school’s doctoral program, students and faculty. All faculty members are mailed recommended readings and kept current on information from CPED.

Contact: Dr. Darlene Bruner, Associate Professor, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, College of Education

University of Vermont

The University of Vermont has formed a committee composed of faculty, deans and graduate students to review its current doctoral programs. Faculty-member Holly-Lynn Busier attended the CPED conference this past summer in Palo Alto, and brought back books and articles for the committee to read and review. On September 4, 2007, Dean Fayneese Miller convened the committee and made Janet Bossange, the new Associate Dean, the committee’s facilitator. Penny Bishop, a faculty-member and the Middle Level Program Coordinator, and Rebecca Gajda, a former UVM faculty-member, have created a framework for examining new curriculum development that the committee will review this fall. The group will also meet on September 25, 2007, to develop a vision for the new practitioner doctorate.

Contact: Fayneese Miller, Dean of the College of Education and Social Services

Virginia Commonwealth University

After achieving faculty consensus on the development of an Ed.D., the School of Education initiated a task force that includes faculty from within the school’s varied disciplines, students and local school professionals. The task force works in conjunction with members of the University’s Carnegie/CADREI Steering Committee, and meets weekly. A set of assumptions and values were drafted and are now being used to guide the program’s development. In addition, they have created a set of five themes that may serve as a common core to a doctorate in leadership. These themes may also have tracks in several disciplines, including educational leadership. The committee and task force are also engaged in on-going discussions of signature pedagogies, including the identification of problem-based inquiry as one such pedagogy. They are also discussing laboratories of practice centered on inquiry-based teams of faculty, clinical faculty, and practicing school leaders; and capstone experiences focused on solving real world school problems. A proposal for the program will be presented to the School of Education by January 1, 2008.

Contact: Henry T. Clark, Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, School of Education

Virginia Tech

To further plans to transform the Ed.D. at Virginia Tech, the School of Education’s Transformational Team met in September 2007. A task force was formed for each of the following areas: Core Courses and Modes of Instructional Delivery, Laboratories of Practice and Internships, Dissertation/Capstone Experiences, and Residency/OTR. Together, they will develop a proposal to present to team members on February 15, 2008, at a one-day retreat. These recommendations will also be presented to the School of Education for consideration across their other Ed.D. program areas such as Counselor Education and Educational Research.

Contact: Theodore Creighton, Professor and Program Leader of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

Washington State University

Faculty committees from across the College of Education are finalizing the designation of core research courses and experiences that students from the school’s three doctoral programs (Ed.D. in Educational Leadership, Teaching and Learning, and Community College Leadership) must incorporate into their plans of study. The committees are also discussing criteria and rubrics for the writing and production of the doctoral dissertation. By the end of the fall 2007 semester, final coursework proposals and guidelines for the writing of the dissertation will be submitted to faculty for review and approval.

Contact: Lenoar Foster, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies, Department of Educational Leadership & Counseling Psychology

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