Duquesne University

CPED-Influenced Program

Professional Doctorate in Educational Leadership

School/Department where the Program is Housed

Department of Foundations and Leadership

Program Description

The Duquense Ed.D. is a three-year, intergenerational, cohort-based program that is open to those who hold an M.A. and currently work as a practitioner in education or in a community organization that is focused on education. Sixteen students will be admitted each year. The program has a theory-to-practice focus bringing together research literature and practice with problems of practice faced in day-to-day educational settings. Each of the courses has been developed among teams of faculty as well as across the department to ensure that the missions and goals of the program are reflected both within each course, across each program year, and across the full program. All core courses will be team taught.

Philosophy and Mission

Our view of a professional doctorate in educational leadership follows the Task Force Report on the Professional Doctorate by the Council of Graduate Schools which states: "a professional doctoral degree should represent preparation for the potential transformation of [a] field of professional practice, just as a Ph.D. represents preparation for the potential transformation of basic knowledge in a discipline” (2007, p. 6). Thus, the professional doctoral program we propose seeks to transform the practice of educational leadership. The transformation will not, however, be manifest solely in the practice of our graduates, but also in the transformation of our practice as university faculty. The nature of the transformed practice we seek with our new design for the professional doctorate in educational leadership is informed and framed by our University’s mission and our School’s identity–and informed by our participation in the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate–we propose a professional doctorate in educational leadership founded in the Spiritan tradition of caring, and focused on scholarship for schools.

Admissions Requirements

Forthcoming. First cohort will be admitted in Summer 2011.

Description of each year of the Program — number of courses, credits, time frame; core, specializations, dissertation/capstone

The Ed.D. is a three year program with core courses taken during the first year, rotations in three areas taken during the second year, and dissertation that is written during the final year to total 84 credits.

The three years are outlined below:

Year I: The Duquesne Educational Leadership Core (6 credits each)

The Educational Leadership Core is a set of learning opportunities that embody the University mission and the identity of the School of Education and will yield a professional doctorate distinct from all other universities. The proposed core comprises six new credit-bearing courses described briefly as follows:

Stewardship of Practice: The professional seminar operationalizing expectations, the signature pedagogy of the program, problems of practice, and intergenerational engagement.
Research & Development: The theoretical and applied aspects of a new model of educational research that creates networks of diverse experience and expertise to focus on problems of practice.
Education & Social Justice: The theoretical frame that connects educational leadership and conditions of social justice; the nexus of theory and advocacy to create the praxis education as a means to achieve social justice.
Ethics & Accountability: Assessment, evaluation, and data use that serves to account for and improve learning designs; driven by the moral imperatives of educational practice.
Learning & Opportunity: The theoretical underpinnings of human learning–in both children and adults–as it impinges on problems of practice and the design of opportunities to learn and to demonstrate that learning.
Leadership Design & Practice: The theoretical and applied aspects of educational leadership, followership and change, including testing the claims that operate in the practice of educational leadership.

Year II: Research and Development Rotations (6 credits each)

The Research and Development Rotations include learning opportunities that take the form of rotations in research and development groups focused by problems of practice in a particular area and led by faculty members. These are new courses.

Policy: one course & one rotation experience in the field
Evaluation: one course & one rotation experience in the field
Urban Education: one course & one rotation experience in the field

Year III: Specialization Via Capstone Demonstrations of Learning

In their third year, candidates focus their work within a particular R&D Group. Their work is to complete several capstone demonstrations of learning that will be incorporated into their dissertation. The dissertation in PDEL focuses on a problem of practice within a particular context (or laboratory) of practice.

Examples of what form dissertations may take include but are not limited to:

Study of problem of Practice
Educational Platform
Briefing(s)
Grant Proposal
Legislative Proposal/White Paper
Professional Development Plan
Community Development Plan
Professional Articles
Community Publications

Milestones Employed in the Program — comprehensive/qualifying exams, papers, or products necessary for graduation

Forthcoming

Program's Support Structure

Forthcoming

Signature Pedagogy

In these discussions, we were intrigued by the deep and implicit structure dimensions of signature pedagogy as they aligned with the work of our colleagues on “systematic and intentional inquiry” (e.g., Moss, 1998; 2001; 2002; Moss & Shank, 2002; c.f., Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993). A disposition toward systematic and intentional inquiry–in direct opposition to the “absolute answer” mindset perpetrated by “best practice” forms of professional development–encourages educators to engage in professional learning as informed skeptics who constantly “construct knowledge that is organic, always unfinished, deriving from judgment and belief and revealed though action” (Moss, 2002).

This signature pedagogy will be incorporated into each core course and rotation course.

Laboratories of Practice

The laboratory of practice will be both the student’s workplace as well as the site visit locations engaged during the second year rotation courses. Students will apply course knowledge to issues of practice in each setting.

Inquiry Courses

Students take an initial research and development course during the first year. In the second years, research and development rotations will combine research methods with rotation courses and rotation laboratory that will facilitate the dissertation process.

Capstone

Forthcoming—dissertation.

Syllabi

Key Contact Person

Gretchen Generett Givens, Ph.D.

Email: generettg@duq.edu

Cost Structure

Forthcoming

Program Handbook

Forthcoming

Program Link

Forthcoming

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