The Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate

Duquesne University's School of Education formed an Administrative Support Team (AST)* to facilitate the work of our faculty, graduate students, alumni, and community partners as we engage the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED). The AST addressed the questions that were forwarded in advance of the organizational meeting in New York in February 2007. Since that time, a new organizational plan utilizing a Coordinating Committee and Work Groups focused on the CPED design parameters has been approved and is being implemented. The following report serves as both a report to CPED and as documentation (and a subsequent working paper) that will serve the design-based research that we intend to conduct throughout our participation in CPED. Specifically, the report updates earlier accounts by taking into account laboratories of practice and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Context

In the fall of 2005, discussions began regarding the redesign of our extant EdD program in educational leadership, the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program for Educational Leaders (IDPEL). Independent of the redesign work for our extant EdD program, work was also proceeding on the design of a new PhD program inspired generally by Berliner's Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate (CID) essay (2006) and, in particular, his proposal that doctoral students in educational psychology develop an understanding of educational policy (see McCown & Hopson, 2006a). Initial design decisions regarding such a program: one that seeks to prepare stewards of education who can bridge the gap between research and policy were documented in technical reports (McCown & Hopson, 2006b; 2006c). The proposals to redesign our established EdD program and to design a new PhD program were presented to the faculty at the 22 August 2006 retreat of the Department of Educational Foundations and Leadership in the School of Education. The coincidence of redesign of an extant doctoral program for practitioners, on one hand, and the design of a new doctoral program for researchers, on the other, was the catalyst for the departmental "work group on the doctorate". At the first meeting of the work group, we began to experience the "CID Ripple Effect" as described by Shulman, et al. (2006).

The challenge that prompted us to consider distinguishing the educational doctorate is to acknowledge the obligations of doctoral students to both the enterprise of and the discipline of education while differentiating how those in EdD programs and those in PhD programs fulfill those obligations. The "CID Ripple Effect" suggests that this challenge is best met by deliberating simultaneously the design or reform of PhD programsand EdD programs. That is exactly what is happening at Duquesne and we are looking forward to participating in the comparative, cross-institutional study of the "CID Ripple-Effect" that seems an inevitable outcome of CPED.

Because we have already started our interrogation of the EdD juxtaposed with a PhD in the Department of Educational Foundations and Leadership, will use that interrogation as our pilot project in CPED. We expect that our pilot efforts will help us interrogate all of the doctoral programs in Duquesne's School of Education. Just as we expect a ripple effect across the consortium of universities in CPED, we expect a similar ripple effect across the doctoral programs and departments within Duquesne's School of Education.

Our current thinking about the key components that distinguish the EdD and PhD is being guided by our understanding of stewardship. Following Golde (2006), Shulman et al. (2006), and others in the CID, we accept that stewardship comprises a set of roles and skills that ensure competence and a set of principles that provide a moral compass. The competence and moral formation required for stewardship includes capabilities to generate, conserve, and transform knowledge.

CID essayists were invited to consider the nature of stewardship. David Berliner and Virginia Richardson did so for education. In his essay, Berliner (2006) argues that educational psychology is both a "discipline" and a "profession" and, thus, educational researchers have an obligation to engage in policy debates (see also Berliner, 2003). Richardson, in her CID essay (2006), argues similarly, but in terms of stewarding both the" field" and the "enterprise" of education.

At Duquesne' School of Education we intend to address the key components of distinction between the EdD and the PhD by asking the following framing question: "How does stewardship of the profession (or enterprise) of education differ from stewardship of the discipline (or field)? Within that frame-and again following the CID construction of stewardship-we are asking questions based on the component capabilities of generation, conservation, and transformation. Specifically, we are using three sets of questions to distinguish the EdD from the PhD:

• What knowledge should stewards of the profession (or enterprise) of education generate?
• What knowledge should stewards of the discipline (or field) of education generate?
• What knowledge should stewards of the profession (or enterprise) of education conserve?
• What knowledge should stewards of the discipline (or field) of education conserve?
• What knowledge should stewards of the profession (or enterprise) of education transform?
• What knowledge should stewards of the discipline (or field) of education transform?

These questions will frame our proposals and prototypes regarding laboratories of practice and the preparation of educational professionals to engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Bridges

In light of our consideration of the key components of distinction between the EdD and the PhD, the AST addressed the third question: What areas might serve as bridges between the two degrees?

The context of Duquesne's initial engagement in CPED includes the redesign of our EdD in educational leadership and the simultaneous design of a new PhD that seeks to prepare researchers who can engage effectively in the policy arena. Asking how the capacities of stewardship for those aspiring to practice education leadership might differ from those aspiring to research education led us also to think about similarities...and the nature of bridges. Bridges are most commonly viewed as connectors, but bridges also separate. In this case, we see the bridge as a place where you can gain perspective, examine the path to your destination, and where you can meet and learn from those with whom you will journey.

At this early stage, we understand CPED as a call to build a bridge that separates two destinations while affording points of connection among those heading in either direction. We think our bridge will be built of stewardship. We are thinking along the lines that both Berliner (2006) and Richardson (2006) address in their CID essays: stewardship must be applied in both the preparation of those who aspire to practice education (stewards of the profession or enterprise) and those who aspire to research education (stewards of the discipline or field).

So, what should EdD students learn to generate, conserve and transform on the way to their destination of practice? And what is the nature of their moral formation? What should PhD students learn and how are they formed as they head for research? What are the connections and commonalities, what are the separations and distinctions? And how do we go about the work of addressing these questions as our next steps?

Next Steps

Within the next 6 months, we seek to achieve the following goal: To generate ‘final assessments' that define-theoretically and operationally-the purpose of IDPEL (our educational leadership doctorate) and the new PhD program.

In order to achieve that goal, we must build the intellectual community at Duquesne that will help us address our framing questions and we must arrange to document that effort so that it can be shared with our colleagues in CPED. The structure of our emerging intellectual community is documented elsewhere in our "Organizational Plan".

We are committed not only to redesign the EdD and design a new PhD, but also to study the process using a design-based research protocol. We seek to conduct design-based research in order to study and make public our learning, in a form that invites critical review and that allows others to build on our learning (Shulman, 1999). UCEA and AACTE papers will be presented in 2008. AERA proposals are pending and working papers have been produced and disseminated (e.g., McCown, Miller, Schreiber, and Welch, 2007).

Proposals and Prototypes.The Coordinating Committee and Working Groups will develop initial proposals for final assessments by asking our framing questions of the literature. Our discussion of the literature will include what has been learned from the CID (in the form of publications that have already been cited elsewhere in this report), related publications on the research enterprise in doctoral study (e.g., Boote & Biele, 2005; Eisenhart & DeHann, 2005; Hostetler, 2005; Maxwell, 2006), the documentation of efforts by other institutions available from the CID Gallery, and our own technical reports that have reviewed the literature and documented our efforts to date. Using our critical review of the literature (via our framing questions) as context, we will generate the final set of assessments, as suggested by Shulman, et al., (2006), for both IDPEL and the new PhD. The creation of final assessments will not only situate our understanding of stewardship, but also establish the criteria that will differentiate EdD preparation from PhD preparation at Duquesne and inform program quality.

At this early stage, we envision initial proposals that acknowledge commonalities across the two programs. One way we have characterized the commonalities is to postulate that generating, conserving, and transforming knowledge requires all doctoral students to inquire, argue, and teach at high levels of competence and with clear understanding of the moral consequences of those activities. Within those activities, however, we have some preliminary ideas that we believe will drive us to distinguish the final assessments of those who aspire to practice educational leadership from those who aspire to research education.

Inquiry.Doctoral students, no matter their aspirations, must be capable of serious inquiry. Thus, we anticipate that the proposals from both writing teams will acknowledge the centrality of the literature review (Boote & Biele, 2005; Maxwell, 2006). But we anticipate that the nature of the literatures reviewed and the conceptual frameworks that result from those reviews will differ. For example, it may be the case that the literature reviewed by EdD students focuses heavily on policy analysis and program evaluation while PhD students focus heavily on theoretically informed empiry.

Argument.The ability to argue effectively is necessary in order to generate, conserve, and transform knowledge. Doctoral students in both degree programs will, therefore, be expected demonstrate the ability both to identify and produce clear claims supported by sound reasons and warranted evidence (Booth, Colomb, & Williams, 2003). However, the nature of the claims made by those who aspire to lead educational enterprises are expected to differ from those who aspire to academic research.

Teaching.All doctoral students will be expected to teach well. That is, to facilitate the learning and development of others though the transformation of knowledge that they have generated and conserved (Golde, 2006). In the case of PhD students, the context of teaching is easily imagined. In the case of EdD students who intend to undertake the practice of educational leadership, it may not be immediately clear. We are entertaining the possibility that leading can be framed as teaching. Those who lead educational enterprises are responsible not only for the learning of students in their organizations, but for the learning and development of the teachers, administrators, school board members, and other community members who contribute to student learning. Thus, we expect proposals for final assessments that address the possibility that leading can be framed profitably as teaching. We expect differences in the proposals with regard to audiences, but we also expect some similarities as well. The transformative capacity of stewardship requires that both doctorally prepared practitioners and researchers inform audiences beyond their educational organizations and beyond their classrooms and paper sessions at research conferences.

Finally, we anticipate initial proposals that will allow us to deliberate matters of signature pedagogy, including the appropriate unit of analysis (Moss & McCown, 2007); the nature of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) compared to scholarshipabout teaching and learning; and the use of laboratories of practice compared with research rotations (Berliner, 2006). And we envision capstone demonstrations of stewardship that diverge for each type of degree. Careful documentation of instances of policy-implementation-which, according to Coburn (2006), is a form of policy-making-followed by a critical examination of the consequential validity of the implementation would, we expect, look very different from a traditional PhD dissertation. Capstones are key to arguing proposals and testing the claims inherent in the resulting prototypes. Once we have determined the characteristics and character of the stewards we seek to prepare, the nature of the research rotations that will comprise our laboratories of practice and the context in which our graduates will practice the scholarship of teaching and learning will further define the distinction between the EdD and PhD in education.

References

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