The Knowledge Forum on the Education Doctorate

A Blueprint for Phase III The Carnegie Project in the Education Doctorate (CPED) has been, from its inception, a consortium of universities seeking to establish professional doctoral degree programs that produce scholarly practitioners who have the potential to transform the practice of education (Council of Graduate Schools, 2007). Phase I yielded a set of principles. Phase II yielded a study (funded by FIPSE) of the effects of CPED’s efforts. Working collaboratively with colleagues at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Phase II also helped the consortium realize that it needs to continue building capacity and networking improvement efforts in education. In Phase III, the CPED Consortium seeks to establish an Organizational Infrastructure that will continue to develop its networking capacity, advance its agenda, and expand its influence. What follows is a “blueprint” of the infrastructure to support this advancement and expansion. See Figure 1.

Figure 1. An overview of CPED’s organizational infrastructure for Phase III:

Figure 1 illustrates The Hub that supports and networks 6 Learning Communities (LC). The Hub: Using what has been learned in Phase II regarding networked improvement, the hub will function in 8 ways:

1. Build capacity for change within institutions and across the consortium 2. Continue to develop an organizational culture and identity 3. Improve the way CPED works and achieves outcomes 4. Train members in improvement strategies and provide tools to engage those strategies 5. Collect, analyze, and share data across the consortium, create a centralized repository of findings

documenting the quality, efficacy, and efficiency of CPED-influenced EdD programs 6. Assist LCs to apply for grants 7. Design and develop on-line work environments, learning experiences at convenings, and an on-

line repository for our products

The  Hub  

Learning  Community  

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Learning  Community  

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Learning  Community  

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Learning  Community  

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Learning  Community  

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8. Support LCs as they work to create sustainable change in educational doctoral programs and the practice of scholarly practitioners

Learning Communities: FIPSE data (collected and analyzed in Phase II) show CPED’s principles are being enacted, but only inconsistently and with varying understanding. Because the principles are foundational to the consortium, LCs will be formed around each of these principles. As a start six LCs will be created, one for each of the CPED principles. Table 1 below aligns a principle with each LC. LC # Focus Principle Statement: The Professional doctorate in education…

1 ethics & social justice is framed around questions of equity, ethics, and social justice to bring about solutions to complex problems of practice.

2 authentic application prepares leaders who can construct and apply knowledge to make a positive difference in the lives of individuals, families, organizations, and communities.

3 diverse partnerships provides opportunities for candidates to develop and demonstrate collaboration and communication skills to work with diverse communities and to build partnerships

4 field-based learning provides field-based opportunities to analyze problems of practice and use multiple frames to develop meaningful solutions.

5 theory & inquiry is grounded in and develops a professional knowledge base that integrates both practical and research knowledge, that links theory with systemic and systematic inquiry.

6 knowledge & practice emphasizes the generation, transformation, and use of professional knowledge and practice.

Table 1: Alignment of Learning Communities and CPED principles The task of each LC will be to develop and then enact a learning agreement that documents, tests, and measures how its principle is contributing to the design and development of professional doctoral degree programs that produce scholarly practitioners who have the potential to transform the practice of education. That work will begin during the June 2014 convening in Denver. Membership in LCs: CPED members will be assigned to one of the LCs in Table 1. Assignment, rather than individual selection, has at least three advantages: (1) as a consortium, we can move quickly to learn how all principles are contributing to CPED’s agenda; (2) perspectives from institutions at varying degrees of development will be represented; and (3) institutional teams can be distributed across principles, multiplying the contributions for each program. Within each of these LCs it is expected that CPED’s Design Concepts (Scholarly Practitioner, Signature Pedagogy, Laboratories of Practice, Inquiry as Practice, Problem of Practice, and Dissertation in Practice) will be used to document enactment of the principles. Each LC will be facilitated by two CPED members: a Senior Improvement Research Fellow and an Improvement Research Fellow (senior and junior faculty, respectively, who gained experience with improvement research during Phase II). Research Fellows will also serve as resources to the Hub. It is expected that all members of the LC will, if they choose, collaborate on presentations, publications, and other opportunities from the work generated by the LCs. As with other CPED efforts, the Publications Committee will coordinate publication efforts. Timeframe: We will test our Phase III organizational infrastructure and the work in and across LCs, starting with the June convening and going through Winter 2015. At the October convening we will assess how the new infrastructure is working within the consortium and what more is needed.

Copyright  2014  by  the  Carnegie  Project  on  the  Education  Doctorate,  Inc.  (CPED).      The  foregoing  material  may  be  used  for  noncommercial  educational  purposes,  provided  that  CPED  is  acknowledged  as  the  author  and  copyright  holder.  Any  other  use  requires  the  prior  written  consent  of  CPED.