1.
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
1
Learning
Community
2
Learning
Community
3
Learning
Community
4
Learning
Community
5
Learning
Community
6

2.
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.