Expectations for Next Year

David Imig explained that over the next year our goal as a group is to produce "proofing sites" or exemplary practices that can be used as models for furthering the conversation and the definitions of the professional practice doctorate. Teams have submited their progress reports that already show concrete signs of advancement on many of the design-concepts and components that we have discussed. This progress will continue between now and our next convening in October, where will be convene at the University of Southern California and have the opportunity to learn from their experience in redesigning their Ed.D. program.

Defining a Path to the Steward of Practice

Participants broke into four groups and each was assigned one of the following questions. Responses from group discussions were as follows.

1. What are the benchmarks or milestones to reach the capstone?

Suggestions from this group included having first year research seminars and annual progress reports for students.
The group grappled with defining what activities should be planned "on the way to the capstone" that will indicate growth and how we will show growth?

2. What would the core curriculum look like?

(Although the goal was to list the core curriculum this was strongly debated and even resisted. Where possible, the university represented by an individual member of the group is listed to give a framework to the notes of the discussion.)

VCU: it would be a mistake to think of this EdD as course driven. Instead, focus on commonalities or central:

• Inquiry problem format with data identification, data gathering, etc.
• Communication skills
• Change process

Some institutions are not looking at courses; rather at competencies that must be developed by EdD candidates.

Arizona: “big ideas”: the power of local with inquiry skill sets

What do you emphasize? Skills, knowledge or concepts, or both?

Example from U of Central Florida participant : Project Zero: uses “generative topics”—they generate a number of entry points for learning, e.g. policy. What do you do with your understanding? You do.

U of Connecticut: Let’s start with the real: what are the assumptions behind them, what do we need to do to start?

U. of Maryland: We want our students to be able to engage deeply with a problem. How do we get there?

Sharing around table: what courses do you already have mapped out? A number of Universities don’t have or want a specific class/course map

However, one graduate student present shared that she had consulted with another graduate student in the program and they had developed a list of “glaring omissions” from their EdD program: policy, research methods (what to do with data), leadership, and theoretical base integration. They wanted better theoretical descriptions: learning theory, instructional theory, behavior theory—they wanted the ability to connect things.

Instead, they got courses like Issues in Curriculum—which could have been better left to staff development at her District.

Another grad student shared that there is no core curriculum at his University EdD, and this leads to a “tug of war” between the method-heavy (evidence based inquiry methodology) and the very practical (case study basis for everything).

At VCU: they work on three Big Ideas: learning organzations, equitable organizations, and accountable organizations. Three things play out in each of the Big Ideas: core knowledge, skill sets, disposition development. But this is not delivered as courses. Integrated in clusters: case studies with “just in time” instruction around the case. Students must write policy briefs, present to school boards, etc.

Attempt to re-focus group: Let’s define: what do we mean by core curriculum? To what degree does our program lean on theoretical? Practical? To what degree does our program deliver themes, topics, etc. To what degree does program learning wrap around products?

AND: are these pragmatics that all CPED institutions MUST agree on?

A grad student: I haven’t learned how to bridge . . .

U. of Maryland: use authentic problems, vetted through superintendents: “is this what you need to (know how to) do in your position?” It’s using the case, but not in the traditional way. New problems come up as you go through the case.

Labs, signature pedagogy, and core curriculum are not separate things!!

VCU: use backward mapping from what the final competencies are that you want students to have.

U. of Maryland: most programs are bereft of a course on learning. To do anything else you must have knowledge of how people learn! A book: “How students learn” by Pat Alexander—constructivist model to learning.

VCU: Big ideas infuse everything

U. of Maryland: but you must have courses grounding

VCU: it’s a radical, social, endogenous, constructivist approach to learning

U. of Connecticut: Learning theory as a core component: how people ought to think about learning and teaching. Inquiry into real problems. How do you think about learning; not what do you know about learning.

VCU, U. of Maryland, U. of Connecticut: discussion about including course on how people learn, and also the tension between wanting to be real innovative and the need to have things that work. There is a utility to having things that are familiar and work.

Rutgers: If faculty don’t know what’s in the core curriculum they won’t do it. Make their own practice (and their cohort members) their lab of practice. No need to go outside of this.

VCU: layered lab of practice

U of Maryland: Every semester, pull from courses to answer core questions. E.g. 1st yr: how do we solve achievement gap?

Core courses discussion: What are the common threads?

• Inquiry
• How people learn

VCU: Hate to talk about core courses because it constrains what you can do. Instead, talk about core ideas, core competencies rather than core courses.

U. of Connecticut: do we need a list of core courses for all? Or core elements?

Rutgers: the reason for this convening is to make a distinction from the PhD and to understand what it is to earn EdD.

So, Core ideas:Inquiry: an EdD is grounded in practice rather than knowledge generation (as PhD)

An EdD is a consumer of research, and a generator of meaning out of data

Is it too strong to think about a set of core competencies that we want our grads to have?

VCU: develop a finite list of core competency strands. Within each strand have each college jump on the website and identify elements or threads of each strand.

Rutgers: Core competencies around

• INQUIRY and
• INTELLECTUAL FOUNDATIONAL KNOWLEDGE (such as policy, change process, organizations, learning, leadership)

The question is, how are these different from PhD?

Signature pedagogy: there are pedagogies that are more encouraging or stimulating of change. Choosing your signature pedagogy should be the one that encourages people to change their thinking.

3. What is the next step in creating the laboratory/internship/practicum?

Description of the programs in this conversation:

Fresno State

• Embedded Field Work in the program
• Coordinator in char of the EdD and L of P – solves and handles problems in the program
• Students are assigned a specific project and are guided through the steps they are going to take
• Not like atypical fieldwork (includes interviews, surveys, etc.)
• IRB? They don’t need it?
• Example from an Applied Research Class: Curriculum alignment and correlations study between the stands and standardized tests
• How do the standards align with the benchmarks? Are they measuring the same thing?
• Labs of Practice (long term – Star Wars) VS. Very Real, Practical Experience (episodic)

Missouri

• Statewide doctoral program
• Included cohort in learning experiences
• Meets multiple times a year to meet as a cohort to solve problems of practice
• Masters level – bring students in for day long, 4 days a week for 5 weeks
• intensive experience
• modeling instruction
• identify problems and work in groups to solve them
• resources provided by facilitator

Penn State

Professional development schools are the labs of practice

• Different levels of labs – ex. med schools: work in hospitals and in amore controlled class environment
• Hershey Medical – students need to practice intubating patients, but if you are teaching EMT’s, is it necessary to teach them this skill all over again?
• Moving from the authentic to the academic – learn what the problem is in the setting and the go into the university setting to play with this problem in a risk free environment (test things that haven’t been tested before)

Arizona State

• Labs - Courses are seminars/convening that take place between experiences in settings in the field
• Learning goes on between the class sessions
  
  
  Are Labs of Practice…
• Internal?
• The cohort itself?
• Either a school of a district where the work takes place in that authentic location?
• Necessary in order to transfer knowledge into a more authentic setting?
• Bringing students into the classroom and out of the field?
• Located in the reality of the university classroom or out in the field?

Masters Level: focus on skills
Doctoral level: Focus on thinking, analyzing, scholarship (TRANSFORMATIVE)

Florida

appropriateness of the lab to the needs of the students

skills vs. dispositions?

• Labs of Practice acts as a catalyst
• Dialog with students and leaders, not just to do their own jobs better, but to think differently/reflexively and look at things in a more scholarly fashion but ultimately bring them back to their sites/organizations

Oklahoma

• Students see the same problem in a rural/suburban/urban setting
• See things through different lenses; work with districts to get release time for students in the program

Labs have Protocols – do we need a protocol for our labs of practice?
Consider the term practicing – are we practicing or are we engaged in the work of practice/our own work in education?

Guiding Principles for Labs of Practice

• Authentic Relevant Problems
• Look at and address problems in a risk free environment
• Match the problem to the level of the students’ needs with consideration of student experience (prior knowledge)
• Students play an equal part in the design and planning
• Recognize/reconcile the tensions among the needs of students, demands of the field, and needs of society=Legs of a Stool model where the needs of the student, the discipline, and society are the the legs.
• Test sites that ‘allow’ for transformation – encourage, enable, and insist on
• The opportunity for inquiry based learning as a vehicle for the development of inquiry skills
• An environment that is
• interactive
• collaborative/negotiations
• situated in the field
• connected to real schools, real districts, authentic settings
• action oriented

Labs of Practice as...

• The Dissertation – is more of a product than a process, while the Labs of Practice embodies the process
• An Environment – ex. science lab (working alone); does this really apply for us in education?

Do we realize the cultural change we are proposing?

Next Steps:

• More collaborative discussion about what Labs of Practice might look like
• Do a content analysis on the key feature of the real Labs of Practice’s (matrix model)
• Determine/discuss who is the lead in these Labs of Practice’s?
• Is it a place or a concept? – not the faculty’s lab, it is the program’s lab for faculty and students
• Can we separate Signature Pedagogies from Labs of Practice?
• Is our Labs of Practice our Signature Pedagogy?
• How do we distinguish between problem driven and problem based?
• Determine where the lab is the entire program
• CPED participants endorse L of P as a critical part of the PPD?

Matrix to collect information of CPED programs – should be concise with a clear distinction between what you are actually doing know and what you want to do at your institution

• Information on:
• Students
• Clients served
• Credentialising
• Labs of Practice
• Signature Pedagogies – what is it?
• Capstone
• University Context
• Unique or distinguishing characteristics

4. How does one faculty member manage multiple doctoral candidates?

This is a big question for many CPED institutions and will be a central question for faculty members at USC at the October convening. Members of this group spent time discussing the challenges that come with increased enrollment that comes with professional practice doctorate. Whether there are cohorts or not, enrollment can range in size from 20-80 students per year. Some of the primary challenges that faculty face come in the forms of support from administration, limited decision making powers, and peers that don't embrace new programs as much as others. Each CPED instituion is grappling with creative ways to manage large cohort groups and have not yet come to a consensus or promising practice.

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