The Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED)

The Professional Doctorate in Education:

1. Is framed around questions of equity, ethics, and social justice to bring about solutions to complex problems of practice.
2. Prepares leaders who can construct and apply knowledge to make a positive difference in the lives of individuals, families, organizations, and communities.
3. Provides opportunities for candidates to develop and demonstrate collaboration and communication skills to work with diverse communities and to build partnerships.
4. Provides field-based opportunities to analyze problems of practice and use multiple frames to develop meaningful solutions.
5. 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. Emphasizes the generation, transformation, and use of professional knowledge and practice.

Program Design Concepts:

1. Scholarly Practitioners blend practical wisdom with professional skills and knowledge to name, frame, and solve problems of practice. They use practical research and applied theories as tools for change.
2. Problem of Practice is a persistent, contextualized, and specific issue embedded in the work of a professional practitioner, the addressing of which has the potential to result in improved understanding, experience, and outcomes.
3. Inquiry as Practice is the process of posing significant questions that focus on complex problems of practice and the ability to gather, organize, judge, aggregate, and analyze situations, literature, and data with a critical lens.
4. Laboratories of Practice are settings where theory and practice inform and enrich each other. They address complex problems of practice where ideas -formed by the intersection of theory, inquiry, and practice- can be implemented, measured, and analyzed for the impact made.
5. Signature Pedagogy is the pervasive set of practices used to prepare scholarly practitioners “to think, to perform, and to act with integrity” (Shulman, 2005, p.52). It challenges assumptions, engages in action, and requires ongoing assessment and accountability.
6. Dissertation in Practice is a scholarly endeavor that impacts a complex problem of practice.
7. Mentoring and Advising should be guided by: equity and justice, mutual respect, dynamic learning, flexibility, intellectual space, supportive learning environments, cohort and individualized attention, rigorous practices, and integration.